childish games, and sat around the social hearth, and knelt side by side at prayer; there are those kindred spirits, whose companionship was so improving and gladdening, and whose absence at first rendered us so desolate, that we were ready to exclaim, "We will go and die with them; and there are others, whom, though we have never seen them, we know so well from the frequent and glowing reminiscences to which with such untiring and breathless attention we have listened, and whom we admire and love so warmly for their piety and their virtues can we, then, be so very sad at the thought of bidding farewell to all things here below, when such rapturous scenes await us, and when especially those, whom we leave behind, may so truly say of us, "Though they return no more, yet we shall go to them?" No; our Christian feelings and hopes forbid us to "love too well that life that keeps us from a better, or to fear that death that leads us to a better life," and incline us rather to follow the example of a celebrated Queen,* who, blaming her ladies and women, when she observed them weeping about her bed, said, "Weep not for me, I pray you; for God, by this sickness, calls me hence to enjoy a better life; and now I shall enter into the desired haven, toward which this frail vessel of mine has been a long time steering."†

*Jane, Queen of Navarre.

"In our long leisure, all sweet and soothing associations of

Thus to the firm Christian believer, what animating prospects present themselves! We say to the firm believer, for in that word is there a serious import. There is a class of persons, who, though they call themselves Christians, shrink from death just as much as if the day-spring from on high had never visited them; and the reason is, that notwithstanding their glowing and eloquent delineations of a hereafter, they do not really hold the Christian faith in its power. They know not Christ, and therefore the sting of death is not at all taken away. We see not how any other explanation can be given; for such a dread of death is altogether inconsistent with attaching any admissible signification to Christ's doctrine of immortality, and to those truly consolatory words, "I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God,"

rest, of relief from anxiety and wearing thought, — of re-ëntrance upon society (a society how sanctified!), of the realization of our best conceptions of what is holy, noble, perfect, — all affections, all aspirations, gather round the idea of Death, till it recurs at all our best moments, and becomes an abiding thought of peace and joy. It is no slight privilege to have that grand idea which necessarily confronts every one of us, all clothed with loveliness instead of horror, or mere mystery." — Life in the Sick Room.

"I was lately speaking to a tender-hearted woman who had known suffering, but not torment, of more than one case of persons, who, dying slowly under a torturing disease, simply and naturally declared, shortly before death, the season of their illness to have been the happiest part of their lives."— Ibid.

and "Because I live, ye shall live also." But it is indeed time that every one of us had learnt that Christianity, to be of any use at all, must mean something in our own minds and hearts; pleasing visions, beautiful poetry, or flitting shadows, will no more sustain and comfort us in adversity, than they will form our characters and animate our lives. We want reality; reality only can satisfy us. The things around us are realities, riches are a reality, pleasure is a reality, worldly elevation is a reality, and how can it be supposed we should be willing to leave all these for mere peradventures and longings? The world of spirits, therefore, must be to us as much real as the Continent of Europe or America ; and the God who dwells there must be no fiction; and our Saviour must be that Saviour who walked in Palestine eighteen centuries ago, and the saints and the martyrs must be, not images or pictures, but actual beings; and our dear friends, father, mother, children, brothers, sisters, all must be to us, not mere objects of fancy, but as truly alive as they used to be when they were with us on the earth ; every thing must have the sure stamp of reality upon it, else no wonder that with the fading senses, and the dwindling frame, the heart sinks low indeed. We should feel as the little child did in that admirable poem by Wordsworth, entitled, "We are Seven.” Five were at home, and two lay beneath "the church-yard tree;" yet they were seven still.

"How many are you, then,' said I,

'If they two are in Heaven?'
Quick was the little maid's reply,
'O master! we are seven!'

'But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in Heaven!'
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little maid would have her will,
And said, 'Nay, we are seven.'"

then as ever.

And she was right- there were as truly seven Do we understand what our Lord meant, when he spoke of "receiving the kingdom or God as a little child?" Such a faith, a faith which should see the departed living, which should feel no more doubt of their being alive, than of the existence of those who are constantly in sight, which in imagination should hold almost daily converse with them, how it would purify, strengthen, and elevate us!

We should not be giving a full and candid utterance to our own opinion and feelings on this momentous subject, were we not most unreservedly to state our conviction, that our own conduct with reference to those who have left, and those who are leaving, the present world, is frequently most inconsistent with our Christian profession, and most pernicious in its tendency. The common practical view of sickness among Christians, what is it but that the greatest of all calamities has befallen us? An incurable

disease, what a blight it casts on

every thing around, though mortality may be regarded as an incurable disease with us all! How few are there, who, when they visit a sufferer, do not depress, rather than encourage him! Instead of looking, and bidding him look, to the effect on his character, reminding him that not one pang is really endured in vain; instead of pointing toward heaven, bountiful, gentle heaven, whence all good, and whence nothing but good, proceeds, and talking of the bright days coming, either here or in nobler spheres, speak just as if there were nothing to care for but a prolongation of his years, and act just as if it were a thing too dreadful to think of, that he should be called away to Paradise!* And when a fellow

we

-to

"One, and another, and another, comes to us with an earnest pressing upon us of the 'hope of relief,'-that talisman which looks so well till its virtues are tried! They tell us of renewed health and activity, of what it will be to enjoy ease again, be useful again, to shake off our troubles, and be as we once were. We sigh, and say it may be so; but they see that we are neither roused nor soothed by it. Then one speaks differently, tells us we shall never be better, -that we shall continue for long years as we are, or shall sink into deeper disease and death; adding, that pain, and disturbance, and death are indissolubly linked with the indestructible life of the soul, and supposing that we are willing to be conducted on in this eternal course by Him whose thoughts and ways are not as ours, but whose tenderThen how we burst in, and take up the word! What have we not to say from the abundance of our hearts, — of that transcendent wisdom,—our willingness, our sweet security, till we are silenced by our unutterable joy?"- Life in the Sick Room.

ness.

that benignity,

our eagerness,