CONSOLATION DERIVED FROM THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY.

R. HALL.

If the Scripture doctrine of immortality is entitled to weight in the regulation of life, its influence is not less sovereign in dispelling the terrors of death, and consoling us under the loss of our dearest friends and relatives. 'I would not have you be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not as others who have no hope; for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God. Then we which are alive, and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; so shall we be ever with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.' And who can fail being penetrated with the divine consolation they afford? If ever Christianity appears in its power, it is when it erects its trophies on the tomb; when it takes up its votaries where the world leaves

them, and fills the breast with immortal hopes in dying moments.

Nor are the words I have quoted adapted to support the mind of a Christian in the view of his own dissolution only; they administer the firmest support amidst the breaches which death is continually making in the church of Christ. A degree of sorrow on such occasions, nature compels us to feel, and religion does not condemn. At the decease of Lazarus, while his sisters were lamenting his loss, Jesus wept.' But the sorrow which a Christian feels in such situations is mingled with hope. By the light of faith he traces his deceased friends into an eternal world. Instead of considering them as lost or extinct, he beholds them under the eye of Divine Providence. The period of their trial is closed; they have entered into rest, where, sheltered from the storms of life and the dangers of temptation, their happiness is forever fixed and unalterable.

Their

separation is neither final nor complete. The pious living and the pious dead are still one family, under one head; and when he who is their life shall appear, they shall appear together with him in glory.'

ANGELS.

MRS. ELIZABETH OAKS SMITH.

WITH downy pinion they enfold
The heart unchanged with woe,
And fan with balmy wing, the eye
Whence floods of sorrow flow;
They bear, in golden censers, up,
That sacred gift, a tear,

By which is registered the griefs
Hearts may have suffered here.

No inward pang, no yearning love
Is lost to human hearts;
No anguish that the spirit feels
When bright-winged hope departs;
Though in the mystery of life
Discordant powers prevail,
That life itself be weariness,
And sympathy may fail;

Yet all becomes a discipline
To lure us to the sky;

And angels bear the good it brings
With fostering care on high;
Though others, weary at the watch,

May sink to toil-spent sleep,

And we are left in solitude,

And agony, to weep:

Yet THEY with ministering zeal
The cup of healing bring,
And bear our love and gratitude
Away, on heavenward wing;
And thus the inner life is wrought,
The blending earth and heaven;
The love more earnest in its glow,
Where much has been forgiven!

COMPARE YOUR AFFLICTIONS WITH THOSE OF OTHERS.

FLAVEL.

SAY not, there is no sorrow like your sorrow.

You have lost one child; but Aaron lost two, and Job all; and lost them by an immediate, instantaneous stroke of God. The children of some pious parents have died victims to public justice. Others have lived to sin so grievously, that their broken-hearted parents were ready to wish they had died from the womb. A third class have experienced such protracted and intolerable sufferings on a sick bed, that even a fond mother has wished and prayed for the closing moment. O think of these things, and acknowledge that your lot has been comparatively merciful.

EARTH-BOUND.

MRS. ELIZABETH OAKS SMITH.

THE toil for earth-its shadowy veil
Envelops soul and thought,

And hides that discipline and life,
Within our being wrought.

We chain the thought, we shroud the soul,

And backward turn our glance;

When on ward should its vision be,
And upward its advance.

THE VOLUNTARY EXCITEMENT OF

SORROW.

FLAVEL.

Ir is strange that we should find pleasure stimulating our grief into exercise. Yet there is truth in the remark of Seneca, that sorrow itself has a kind of delight attending it. The Jews who came to Mary's house to comfort her, when they saw that she went out hastily, followed her, saying, She goeth to the grave, to weep there;' 'as those do,' says Calvin, who seek to provoke their troubles, by going to the grave, or often looking upon the dead.'