To indicate warmth in the church, the meeting itself must be warm. In the heat of summer a pastor in the country asked one of his people why he did not come to the prayer-meeting. And when the man gave the heat of the weather as the reason, the minister said to him, "If you have found any colder place than our prayer-meeting, I wish you would tell me where it is." We know what is meant by spiritual coldness or warmth, death or life, and we use these terms freely to express our sensations or want of sensation. We know what a cold meeting is, and we ought to know what a warm one is. And as it is often hard to tell which is effect and which is cause, so we may not be able to say whether a warm prayer-meeting draws the crowd or the crowd makes the meeting warm. It is well to warm those who do come, and their warmth will attract others. Scattered coals expire, but together they burn. And that is the way to build up the prayer-meeting. I would not assume that every one who is absent is in neglect of duty, or in a state of sin. If this were a fact, the absentees might be fit subjects for discipline. But we could find nothing in the Word of God or the rules of the church on which to rest the charge of neglect of Christian duty or indulgence in known sin. We must make the meetings so attractive and so useful that people cannot afford to stay away. This can be done. It often is done, and the soul, refreshed and delighted, sings:

"I have been there and still would go:
'Tis like a little heaven below."

It is not unusual to speak very slightingly of the prayers and talks of unlearned laymen, and to say that meetings in which they exercise their gifts are not for edification. There are weak brethren who ought to keep silence, and a judicious pastor finds it one of his delicate duties to suppress such men-men who want to talk all the more because they have nothing to say worth hearing. But there are very few of these irrepressibles. They do sometimes spoil a meeting. Yet good sense and a little tact on the part of the minister will regulate the matter, and the patience of the people will

not be often or sorely tried. More Christians are afraid to take any part in a meeting than there are to make themselves disagreeable by their weakness or eccentricities. And when the church with great unanimity throws its whole heart and soul into the prayer-meeting, the tide of good feeling and strong emotion sweeps away all these little objections, and in the enjoyment of the hour the saints of the Lord find great enjoyment.

Thus prayer is answered while the people are praying. They get the blessing at once. All spiritual good comes from the Spirit of God, and if quickened religious life is a blessing, it is the gift of the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer. And this is the greatest and best influence of a prayer-meeting. We need such helps to holy living. We do not make religion the chief concern as we should; we make our business the first and principal thing, and well for us it is that Sunday comes once a week and compels us to shut up shop. And if we would in the middle of every week spend an evening in social prayer and conference it would be a decided help in the religious life, one of the powerful means of grace. Of course every Christian has his private hours of conversation with God and his own soul, his daily walk with God, his meditation with his heart on his bed or in his closet. But we are social beings. It is not good for man to be alone all the time. There is help, stimulus, and strength in praying together, singing praise together, and in testifying of what God has done for our souls. Never let us get to be so genteel or respectable that we shall feel such communion to be common or unclean. God has cleansed it, and we may not despise or undervalue it or refuse to enjoy it. The aristocracy in his kingdom is composed of those who pray best and most. They live near the throne. They always go to prayer-meeting. They know the power of prayer. The salt of the church is in the walk and prayer of these disciples whose hearts burn within them as they pursue the journey of life with Jesus as their constant companion.

Therefore I magnify the prayer-meeting. It is indeed a thermometer by which the spiritual temperature of the

church is often correctly measured, but it is itself a heater from which warmth is radiated through the body of the church. It acts and is reacted upon. It is a strong support of the pastor warming his heart and holding up his hands when they are ready to hang down. It is the life-blood of the system, permeating by its sweet influence the remotest extremities, and filling with the graces of the Holy Spirit the great central heart.

No church can afford to dispense with this service in the midst of the week. Call it by what name you please, and conduct it according to circumstances and your taste, but by all means gather yourselves in the place where prayer is wont to be made. Get nearer to the throne of divine grace. Plead the precious promise of Christ's presence. And you will say "it is good to be here."

THE DEAD AND THE LIVING.

SOME THOUGHTS CONCERNING BURIALS.

MR. JAMES BROWN, the head of the great banking-house of Brown Brothers & Co., said to me when he was more than eighty years of age:

"I am thinking of writing an article for your paper."

As I was not aware that he was in the habit of writing for the press, his remark gave me equal surprise and pleasure, and I replied:

"I hope you will carry out your good intention without delay." He continued:

"I want to write against the great extravagance of funerals in the city. It is a bad example set by the rich, and a burden upon the poor."

Mr. Brown did not carry out his good intention, but his funeral was an example of simplicity in perfect harmony with the views and feelings he had often expressed. Some of the most wealthy citizens have given directions that their funerals should not be marked by any needless expense.

And that they might not be charged with meanness, they have directed that the sum which would have been spent on their funeral should be given to charitable objects. One rich man on the occasion of a funeral in his family, avoiding all extravagance, sent a hundred dollars to each clergyman who was present in the church, whether officiating or not, and in this way he distributed at least a thousand dollars.

When one is in great sorrow, the feelings rather than the judgment are apt to control the action. It is grateful to the heart in grief to expend care and thought and treasure upon the object that has been removed. And sometimes it seems as though the mourners thought the depth and sincerity of their sorrow would be estimated by the amount of money they expended upon the burial. This is a sad mistake, for the heart that is truly sorrowful on account of the death of a dear friend, does not expend itself in such trifles as the ornaments of a funeral.

In the country the beautiful custom of going to the grave with the friends and assisting in the last rites, prevails and ought never to be given up. It is a tribute of affection and respect, a token of good neighborhood that tends to make "the whole world kin." It is a touching and mournfully pleasing sight when a long procession, carriages of all sorts, follows the remains of one well known, and respectfully gathers about the grave as the dust returns to its native dust. Some of the earliest recollections of my life are of long funerals making their slow journey to the rural churchyard. But in the city, funerals are so many and the distance to cemeteries is so great that it is now in most cases more convenient to have the funeral services public, and the burial private. This is far more in harmony with the feelings of the bereaved, and it may be said that it is the common practice now.

Funerals on Sunday are by no means so frequent as they formerly were. It once was the practice of some to hasten a funeral by a day or two, or delay it as long for the sake of having it on Sunday. This saves a day for business. But it entails an amount of labor that should not be done on the

Lord's Day. It imposes a heavy burden on ministers, some of whom very properly decline to officiate at them on that day unless it is a work of necessity.

The tendency to have funerals as soon after the death as is decent is on the increase. There are good reasons for delay rather than haste. It is not human, it is unnatural to be in a hurry about putting our dead out of sight. But I do not think mistakes are made, and persons buried in a state of trance and supposed to be dead. Now and then a notice is made in the newspapers of a person being buried in this state, and a harrowing tale is told of the dreadful discovery. I have been in the habit of investigating each one of these reports, and IN EVERY CASE they have been found to be false. In some cases they are fabrications, without the slightest foundation in fact. Sometimes a young man out of mere wickedness invents the tale and sends it to a distant newspaper. To make a sensation it is indiscreetly published, and is copied into a thousand papers within a week. When its falsehood is exposed not one in a hundred of these papers will publish the denial. And so it comes to pass that tens of thousands of people never hear the story denied and receive it as true. In some countries, as in Germany, there are cemeteries in which is a house of rest and safety, where the dead are laid until undoubted evidences of death appear. I visited one of these in Halle: in one chamber was a nice couch on which the body was laid and kept at a proper temperature. Thimbles were put on the fingers, and from these a delicate wire extended through the wall into an adjoining room, where was a watcher night and day. The slightest movement of one of the fingers would set a bell ringing. About seventy persons every year, more than one a week, are thus tested, and the old sexton told me that NOT ONE had ever been found to be living. I inquired if such arrangements were common. He said they were, and he had heard a rumor that once upon a time a life had been saved at Erfurt; but it was only a rumor-he had never known an instance. A writer in one of the New York daily papers most foolishly and inconsid