executed, and that for a time it restrains innocent parties. The delay of execution may be from motives of wise policy, and necessary to secure the ultimate and perfect triumph of justice. It is easy to conceive many reasons why justice should linger in this life; if it should travel step to step with transgression, duty, being in all cases coincident with interest, might be pursued from mere selfishness, and if this were the case the present state would not be a suitable theater for the probation or display of moral character; if, therefore, it is easy to conceive that it may be such a theater, it is equally easy to suppose that justice may rightfully slumber for at time. If discipline and education be among the purposes of this life, as it is granted they are of its early period, there may be good reasons why virtue may be visited with temporary suffering, disappointment, and persecution, the compensation consisting in our gradual education and exaltation to a higher sphere. Some argue that if the present administration of Divine justice is imperfect, we must infer that its future administration will be also. Mr. Hume states this objection with plausibility and force. He says: "The only safe principle on which we can pretend to judge of those parts of the universe which have not fallen under our examination, is by concluding them to be analogous to what we have observed:

'Of God above, or man below,

What can we reason but from what we know.'

Now the only fact we know with respect to the moral government of God, is that the distribution of happiness and misery in human life is in a great measure promiscuous. Is it not then a most extraordinary inference from this fact, to conclude that there must be a future state of existence to correct the inequalities of the present scene? Would it not be more reasonable, and more agreeable to the received rules of philosophizing, to conclude either that the idea of a future state is a mere chimera, or that, if such idea shall ever be realized, the distribution of happiness will continue to be as promiscuous as we have experienced it to be."

This reasoning is not valid. The premises assume what is not true, namely, that if there is a future world, it is to be regarded as a state unconnected with the present; that the present and future worlds are independent of each other, the administration in each being complete: whereas they are but parts of the same whole, as youth and age are parts of the present life, different stages of the same being, time the beginning, eternity its continuance, the administration of the one being the complement of that of the other. The youth who argues from his impunity in early life that he will not

be punished in his manhood or old age for his youthful idleness and debauchery, or the criminal who argues from the promiscuous distribution of his comforts and discomforts prior to his trial, to a similar distribution after his conviction of capital offense, makes a sad mistake.

This argument of Hume also conceals a part of the truth which it professes to state. To show this more clearly let us syllogize it. The analogies of the present are our only guide in judging of the future.

The distribution of happiness and misery in the present life is in great measure promiscuous.

Therefore it will be so in the future.

To the second premise, in order to make a full statement, we should add, but with a natural tendency to a righteous adjustment, hindered by accidental forces. Adding these two elements to the proposition, we may reverse the conclusion. For the tendencies, being natural, will act steadily and permanently; the hinderances, being accidental, will in course of time cease; so that if man were immortal in the present life, time would ultimately arrange all things in the order of righteousness, gathering to virtue all power and happiness, and dooming to vice all weakness, lamentation, and woe. And the result must be hastened by a change of the venue to a higher court.

It is, we conceive, in strict conformity with the rules of philosophizing to conclude that there is a supreme court, in which the countless unlitigated causes of time are docketed, and the innumerable claims of justice, that can never be asserted here, shall be finally heard.

In 1829 Mr. Airy found that the distance of Herschel from the sun was continually varying. La Verrier compared all the variations, and concluded that they could only be accounted for by the existence of a world beyond, and that the greatest of Herschel's variations marked the period of its conjunction with that unknown world. Taking for granted that its distance from the sun corresponds with that of the next interior planet, he estimated its distance at twice that of Herschel; then by the law that the squares of the distances are as the cubes of the times, he computed its annual revolution at two hundred and twenty years. Supposing the plane of its orbit to correspond with that of Herschel, he determined the point of space in which it was at that moment to be found. He wrote to a friend who commanded a powerful telescope, telling him where to point in order to see a new world. The result verified his calculations. Thus a philosopher in his study, with the deviations

of a world from its proper path, and the laws of the universe for the elements of his calculations, pierces thousands of millions of miles into space, and sees with his eye of science an unknown world. Thus, with the moral deviations of this world and the eternal laws of justice for the elements of our calculation, can we not pierce eternity and behold a world of righteous retribution?

I write under circumstances that impress this argument upon my mind-in the village where in childhood I hailed the rising sun, and looked up through the green branches to the bright stars, and first thought of Him who leadeth them forth as a shepherd doth his flocks, yet numbers the hairs on the head of his humblest child, and wept as I whispered "Our Father." Near by is the old graveyard; it was inclosed with a board fence, encompassed with hazel bushes, fringed with elder blossoms, and entered by a narrow gate, through which the pall-bearers bore the coffin before the hearse was known, and beside which was a stile where the little ones and their mothers were wont to cross on summer evenings, to step softly between the graves, and silently read the inscriptions on the simple headstones: there I first learned how dreadful death is, and my eyes were taught to send forth tears at the mention of the Psalmist's words: "Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness." Lo! streets now run through this sacred spot, and the busy wheels rattle over the broken gravestones. And is this the end of those sweet ones whose heads fond parents laid upon down and curtained with damask, whose eyes sparkled with genius, and whose lips were full of truth, whose feet were swift on errands of mercy, and whose hands were outstretched to the poor?

Behind the walls of a dilapidated church is another graveyard, many of whose graves are thrown open. In one yet green and undisturbed rests a man who, after a peaceful and prayerful life, went through the valley of death fearing no evil. As my heart cried out, "My father!" I felt that the words described more than a phantom.

Passing through the streets, now streets of strangers, and over roads much changed, to a magnificent native grove on a sunny hill-side, I came to the streets of the new city of the dead. Here I was at home. Wandering through carriage-ways, and marking the names on the monuments, I lived my early days over again. The dead are around me, not in their winding-sheets, but in their loveliest living forms. The aged pastor spake once more his words of wisdom, the sufferer uttered anew his tale of sorrow, "loving eyes glanced love to love again.' "Now there is a sound of revelry by night," and anon the sweet flute pours forth its plaintive notes beneath the harvest moon. But the illusion vanishes; I am again among the dead. O, with what

heroic struggles, with what patient endurance, with what repentant sighs, with what cries of agony, with what hidden griefs, what desolated hearth-stones, are these green graves associated! Well do I recollect when my mother, returning from the death-chamber of a child of sorrow, drew me close to her breast, and told me, with subdued tones, how the broken heart of the sufferer was healed, and how her parting blessing fell softly on the heads of her little ones, and how unearthly whispers passed her cold lips, and how, when she ceased to whisper, she gave the promised signal that her departing spirit greeted the coming angels. There are other scenes that I may not paint. Passing to the western limit of the grounds, I sat down on the grassy slope to enjoy the surrounding prospect. There, amid a merry group, I had gathered wild plums and walnuts; there I had seen the deer start from the bushes, and the Indian rush forth in his gigantic pastimes. How changed! On the right is the thrifty village with its spires, on the left is the long-drawn valley with its variety of pleasing landscapes, and down it rushes the fire-breathing iron horse, with his cargo of merry travelers, while beside it stretches the telegraphwire, thrilling like a nerve with the news of the metropolis. Westward rise hills on hills, in graceful slopes, till the last green summit melts into the setting sun.

The pastures are clothed with flocks, the fields are covered with corn, the houses encompassed with flowers, while here and there stand the grand remains of the ancient forest like organ-lofts, with their thousand feathered pipes ready to pour forth notes of praise at the morning hour.

O God! thou moldest the earth into forms of enrapturing beauty; "thou visitest it and greatly enrichest it with the river of God; thou preparest them corn when thou hast so provided for it; thou waterest the ridges thereof; thou settlest the furrows thereof; thou makest it soft with showers; thou blessest the springing thereof; thou crownest the year with thy goodness, and thy paths drop fatness." Thou who dost beautify and renovate the natural world, hast thou prepared no spring for the moral? Is life a mystery? or a probation and preparation for a better state? Almighty Father! where are thy children who made this wilderness to blossom as the rose? our fathers who trusted in thee? our mothers who breathed thy name with their dying lips? Hast thou not folded them to thy loving bosom?

Pleasant above all and amid sweet

I would not depreciate the light of revelation. things it is to stand in the temple of Christ, song and solemn feast to hear of Him who is "the resurrection and the life." Pleasant also to stand in the temple of nature, with

its floor carpeted with green and its roof fretted with stars, and its gallery of mountains charged with heavenly music, and while the time-piece of the skies measures off our days, to listen to the voices of the reason and the heart speaking of a better land. To me the two revelations are in harmony; the one confirms what the other suggests, the one completes what the other begins. Nature puts angels at the sepulcher to roll away the stone; revelation brings from the grave-clothes the warm and living man, calling forth the exclamation, "My Lord and my God!"

ART. II.-JABEZ BUNTING.

The Life of Jabez Bunting, D.D. With Notices of Cotemporary Persons and Events. By his Son, THOMAS PERCIVAL BUNTING. Vol. I. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1859.

ALMOST immediately subsequent to the period embraced in the two volumes, already published, of Dr. Stevens's interesting "History of Methodism," three men cotemporaneously appeared upon the arena of English Methodism, who individually exercised a broad yet distinctive influence upon the weal and progress of the Wesleyan Church-Jabez Bunting, Robert Newton, and Richard Watson. The first molded and liberalized its ecclesiastical economy; the second diffused and energized its influence through the length and breadth of Great Britain; and the third most successfully directed and defended its missionary operations abroad. Although this description is just, so far as the peculiar sphere of each is concerned, the characteristic attributed to each was not confined exclusively to either. They were men of one heart, and mind, and work, and were cheerful and efficient colaborers in every department of Methodism. In maturer years, however, each seemed, in the direct order of Providence, and without any seeking on his part, to move in a special sphere of labor and usefulness. Bunting was an acknowledged ruler in Israel; Newton was the peerless orator and popular preacher; and Watson, the presiding genius and commanding intellect in the missionary institutions of the Church.

Each has gone to his blessed reward. Watson's feeble frame first gave way, for the sword was too keen for the scabbard. Newton next fell, but it was as a veteran in his Master's service, after a life of marvelous and protracted activity and usefulness, as one who had fought a good fight and finished his work, as a shock of corn ready