So have I passed the gate of my friend, and knew not it could never open again at his touch. Wait not till church-yards and graves come into your mind, but look upon the chamber where you lie at rest as to be soon the witness of your mortality, the container of your clay. Think of the threshold at which you daily enter as that from which soon, in your coffin, you must be borne. Oh! could "the stone cry out from the wall, and the beam out of the timber answer," as in the vision of Habakkuk, would not a low murmur from every human abode, reared long enough for the weather-stain, through all your daily walks, be continually saluting your ears, "Set thine house in order; 66 Prepare to meet thy

God"?

To the thoughtless, this whispered summons is a piercing alarm. Heavily tolls the bell in their ears. But to those who have truly loved, the thought of death is made happy by the rending of their own heart-strings; mortality is embalmed by the dear members that have passed under it; the mansion of wood and stone is hallowed by the expiring sigh on which the faithful spirit fled; and the grave, which joins to that of partner or child, looks winning and pleasant. In another sense than that of the sacred poet,

"Sweet is the savor of their names,

And soft their dying bed."

Such is the peculiar privilege of affliction. Its earthly tabernacle is not only darkened, but glorified. Precious, indeed, are the forms, the faces, and voices

of our friends. As these, so long familiar, vanish and die away, we can hardly realize to ourselves the loss. When the door opens, we expect to see the well-known countenance, and to hear the wonted greeting. The near and seen love of kindred and companions has warmed and enlightened the common ground on which we tread. It has made of the whole cold earth a mountain of transfiguration. It is a sad and painful descent to go down from this beautiful height. But, if our souls be true, we do not go down merely, any more than did our Saviour from that old summit of celestial converse. We do not go to the chamber of agony and the deposit of dust alone, any more than he did to his rough cross and to Joseph's new sepulchre. He went down to rise again, and how far more gloriously! Tabor was the dim illumination of a night, and the splendor of a narrow tent, compared to that transfiguration coming from no sudden blaze of light, no transient emotion of joy, but essential and everlasting, in a tabernacle that cannot be moved, and a city which hath foundations. And so all the joys of present affection, satisfying as they may sometimes be, are but as a low height and feeble brilliance compared with those which God hath prepared for them that love him, where none of this earth's misunderstandings, distrusts, or sins can come.

Can ye not believe this, ye that bow and agonize with sorrow? If you have been loyal in your human love, I know that you can. The man that pines and despairs merely cannot have known the depth, purity, and spirituality of real affection even here;

for such affection is no sceptic. It is essentially believing. Faith and hope are its own offspring, that come into its desolate room as the best consolers, and cheer it with promises and longings, against which the grave is no bar, but a door "to that within the veil." True affection lifts up its objects from the sod. It rescues them from the corruption of the charnel-house. It enshrines them. in happier spheres, suited to the unfolding of all their own holy faculties. How such affection welcomes the revelations of Jesus, and can accept his largest prophecies, and can go on by anticipation to occupy the glorious mansions he prepares in his Father's house! Did I say that all your training and adorning of those dear to you were but the decoration of victims for the tomb? Let me recall those words, or rather let me add a more glorious, predominant truth, which finds not its period in the grave, but runs immeasurably beyond it. No: all the true instruction, all the beautiful accomplishment, all the enriching of the mind, and unfolding of the soul, are not the garlands of a corpse! They cannot be sculptured on a tomb! They cannot wither when the world's beauty has for ever faded, or when the places that have known you are themselves no longer known, and the tombs you have builded can no more be distinguished from the dust they were meant to cover. They will bloom in immortal beauty in a region where nothing decays. They shall shine where both the light and the shade of the earthly picture are lost in an unmingled lustre; for no clouds can come, and no shadows fall, where "God and

the Lamb are the light." Peter himself, who would so readily have made tabernacles of ease and comfort in which to abide upon the mountain, could afterwards rejoice in his sufferings for his converts. The voice he heard through the splendor of the transfiguration," This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear ye him," — could cheer him on in a path where was no comfort or ease, but which, lined with the thorns of hardship and persecution, was to end in a bloody death. Let that voice, though uttered eighteen centuries ago, still cheer us; for we shall know no trouble that can be final, no grief that can be desperate, if we heed it whilst we hear!

161

DISCOURSE XVI.

THE SONG OF THE REDEEMED.

Rev. xiv. 3.- AND THEY SUNG AS IT WERE A NEW SONG BEFORE THE THRONE, AND BEFORE THE FOUR BEASTS, AND THE ELDERS; AND NO MAN COULD LEARN THAT SONG BUT THE HUNDRED AND FORTY AND FOUR THOUSAND, WHICH WERE REDEEMED FROM THE EARTH.

THE Book of Revelation is filled with accounts of the writer's visions of things above the ordinary perceptions of mortals. He has a second and higher sight. As he gazes, the veil is drawn aside from futurity, the gates of heaven and hell are unfolded, the joys of the blessed and the woes of the lost reach him. The dispositions of human souls, as they are exercised in the passing hour, or lurk in the secret chambers of the mind, are projected, in their final consequences, upon this broad canvas in the air of eternity, while the rapt prophet reads and notes them for the instruction of the living.

According to the tradition of the church, it is the beloved disciple John who is honoured with this privilege of unearthly insight; and from the lonely isle of Patmos he looks up, not, like the astronomer from his observatory, to measure the size and cal