cords that bind the spirit to the body, he will at the same moment abruptly break every thread that connects you with the activities and possessions of this world. And if you have no inheritance beyond this life, you will be a bankrupt in the dying hour. The dark waves of death's cold river may be now beating nearer your path than you think. In a few hours the wave may come which shall break your last foothold and bear you away from the shores of time.

"Over the river they beckon to thee,

Loved ones who have crossed to the farther side; The gleam of their snowy robes I see,

But their voices are hushed in the dashing tide."

"THESE ALL DIED IN FAITH."

[Extracts from a Discourse delivered at the funeral of Rev. Benjamin G. Paddock.]

W

REV. J. B. FOOTE.

E OBSERVE a proclivity in the human mind to unbelief. What can be reasoned out, traced by some logical process, or carried through a mathematical demonstration, is promptly credited; but what is impalpable to the senses, or undiscoverable by the mind, or incomprehensible to human reason, is set aside. Such a course is not always honorable to the mind itself. Faith is as legitimate and honorable as reason; they should go hand in hand, and supplement each other. "Faith is the right and reason the left wing of the soul, as she goes flying through the universe to find her Father." Let the right wing be crippled, and she veers around and falls upon the frozen waste of rationalism. Let the left wing be broken, and she plunges into the fiery floods of superstition. But let each pinion be strong and fleet, and she lifts herself sublimely from earth, shuns the realms of ice and of fire on either hand, and soars home to her Father's bosom.

To die, seems terrible; but to die in faith, is glorious!

To see one die, is agonizing; but what faith then sees so changes the scene that we exclaim :

"Tis not the Christian, but Death itself that dies!"

Our precious friends who once knelt with us at the communion rail, sang with us the sweet songs of Zion, and to whom we have been united by a thousand endearing ties -where are they? Alas! how many lie beneath the willow or the cypress? The prophets-Isaiah, Daniel, Malachi; the apostles-Paul, and John, and Thomas; the martyrs Stephen, Ignatius, Polycarp; the reformers and fathers-Luther, Wesley, Asbury, Hedding, Gary, Puffer, Ninde, and a host of dear and honored ones-where are they? Departed, gone, dead! These have "all died." But what an important modification of the thought is given by the completed sentence, "These all died in faith!" Let us notice:

1. They died in the faith of a living God, of a per sonal, Divine Christ, and of a holy and all-sufficient Sanctifier.

A faith like this, which, beginning in God, sweeps through the vast realms of his providence; starting from the present, penetrates eternity; finding the soul polluted in sin, purifies it in the cleansing blood of a Saviour; and, from the mouth of hell, lifts it to the portals of heaven; a faith for the life that now is, and for the life to come.

Christian faith, in its central element and saving quality, is faith in Jesus; recognizing, taking him as the one Divine and perfect Saviour; as the proper and sufficient ground

of our confidence, object of our love, center of our hope, source and substance of our joy, here and hereafter. This is the root of the Christian life. This is the principle which vitally allies the soul to God, gives it to partake of

the Divine nature.

This gives the Christian now, in this life, a positive and abiding sympathy with those eternal realms of purity and bliss which Christ creates and fills with his own presence. This is the principle of victory and power. It conquers sin, gives vigor to effort, scales the heights of difficulty, removes mountains, endures afflictions, scatters the fears of death, and opens the eye upon enrapturing visions of celestial glory. In such a faith the saints of all ages lived and triumphed, And they all died in this faith.

2. They died in the faith of a future, conscious, and joyous life.

Every man reflects with anxious inquiry upon his future destiny. Whether our experience is limited by the bounds of this life, and if not, by the thought, what shall be the character of that existence, is a question which stirs the depths of every human soul. When my body is pulseless and cold; when my friends gather around to take a last look of my lifeless form; when they place me in the dark and silent grave, and leave me there to moulder; and when they are visiting occasionally the cypress shade, to drop at my tomb the tear of sad bereavement-shall I be anywhere? Shall I stop thinking and feeling, when my body shall cease breathing? If not, what shall I be thinking? what the character of my feelings? I have an inex

pressible anxiety to know these things. As I bend over the graves of my loved ones, as I gaze down the dark, mysterious labyrinth of the unexplored future, my solicitude to know something about death and its sequences is absolutely irrepressible

The Bible alone furnishes the key which can unlock the problem of the soul's immortality. But once revealed, we not only find nothing opposed to it in nature or reason, but much to corroborate it. Yes, reason joins with revelation to proclaim,

"Beyond the flight of time,

Beyond the vale of death,

There surely is some blessed clime
Where life is not a breath.”

The philosophical argument drawn from the innate longing after continuance of being; from the distinctive character of the soul's existence in its essential attributes and functions; from the consciousness of personal identity; from the disparity often seen between our bodily powers and mental achievements; from the universal notion of a future life; from the incongruities and absurdities of nature on any other hypothesis; and from other considerations, goes far, if not to suggest a future state, yet certainly to corroborate the Scripture statement.

But we enjoy the higher privilege of standing within the Bible temple, and where the voices of clear, well-demonstrated, divinely-attested truth are sounding all about us. "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not