Happy are they who are already sensible of the darkness, and desire to rise out of it! Happy they, who look forward to the coming time of light, and rejoice in the anticipation of it, longing for the day of HIS appearing. One of the finest poems of Henry Vaughan, was composed in that anticipation of the judgment, when the types of immortality and wrought veils of imagery in nature will be laid aside for the reality, when the night that reigns here will give place to an éternal day. Let us look to it, that we be up and dressed before the morning, lest that day come upon us as a thief.

THE DAWNING.

Ah! What time wilt thou come? when shall that cry,

The Bridegroom's coming! fill the sky

Shall it in the evening run,

When our words and works are done?

Or will thine all-surprising light

Break at midnight,

When either sleep, or some dark pleasure,

Possesseth madmen without measure?

Or shall these early, fragrant hours

Unlock thy bowers?

And with their blush of light descry

Thy locks crowned with eternity?
Indeed, it is the only time,

That with thy glory does best chime.
All now are stirring; every field

Full hymns doth yield.

The whole creation shakes off night,
And for thy shadow looks the light.
Stars now vanish without number,
Sleepy planets set and slumber,

The pursy clouds disband and scatter,
All expect some sudden matter.

Not one beam triumphs, but, from far,
That morning star.

O, at what time soever thou,

Unknown to us, the heavens wilt bow,
And with thine angels in the van,
Descend to judge poor careless man,
Grant I may not like puddle lie
In a corrupt security,

Where, if a traveller water crave,
He finds it dead and in a grave;
But as this restless, vocal spring,
All day and night doth run and sing,
And though here born, yet is acquainted
Elsewhere, and flowing keeps untainted,
So let me all my busy age

In thy free services engage.

And though while here of force I must
Have commerce sometimes with poor dust,
And in my flesh, though vile and low,
As this doth in her channel flow,
Yet let my course, my aim, my love
And chief acqaintance be above.
So when that day and hour shall run
In which thyself wilt be the Sun,
Thou'lt find me drest and on my way,
Watching the Break of thy Great Day!

HENRY VAUGHAN.

BEFORE your sight

Mounts on the breeze the butterfly, and soars,

Small creature as she is, from earth's bright flowers,
Into the dewy clouds! The soul ascends
Towards her native firmament of heaven,

When the fresh eagle, in the month of May,
Upborne at evening on replenished wing,
The shaded valley leaves. and leaves the dark
Empurpled hills, conspicuously renewing

A proud communication with the

sun.

Low sunk beneath the horizon.

WORDSWORTH.

A grave.

WHAT is the world itself? thy world?
Where is the dust that has not been alive?
The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;
From human mould we reap our daily bread.
The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes
And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.

YOUNG.

Tis but a night, a long and moonless night,

We make the grave our bed, and then are gone.
Thus at the shut of even the weary bird

Leaves the wide air, and in some lonely brake
Cowers down, and dozes till the dawn of day,
Then claps his well-fledged wings, and bears away.
BLAIR'S Grave.

BUT some one will say, how are the dead raised? and with what body do they come? Thou fool! That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die. And that which thou sowest thou sowest not that body which shall be; but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other kind. But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.

PAUL in 1st Corinthians.

CHAPTER VIII.

Analogies from Nature to the Resurrection.

THE doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is purely a doctrine of Divine Revelation. Nevertheless, there is a foreshadowing of it in the processes of nature itself, so that it may be regarded also as a natural revelation in types and analogies, which only waited for the Word of God to receive their full interpretation and confirmation. All nature is but as the beginning or groundwork of God's revelations; a woof on which the bright and glorious figures of Divine Revelation are wrought, as flowers, landscapes, and historical tablets on a piece of tapestry. The only service of the texture and course of the natural world is to receive these superadded glories, to have them inwrought (these grand and infinite truths, unattainable by intuitive intelligence), inwrought and supported upon the very vestments of mortality, even as the sentences of God's word were threaded in the robes of the High Priest, and displayed as frontlets and fringes of their garments. The frame of Nature, yea, the universe itself, is but as a loom for the weaving and unrolling of truth revealing God; and when it shall have answered its present purpose, then it shall be laid aside, just as a loom is taken to pieces, when nothing more is to be done with it. Yea, O Lord God, said the inspired Psalmist, this