made with hands, eternal in the heavens." "Absent from the body, present with the Lord." "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit to God who gave it." "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul." We can not take time to extend quotations or remarks, but how inspiring to feel, "Here is firm footing, here is solid rock." "The stars may fade away, the sun himself The wreck of nature, and the crush of worlds." 3. They died in the faith of a glorious resurrection. Human nature asks not only after the departing spirit, but the dear forms we loved so well. Shall we ever see them again? We place them in a beautiful casket; we adorn the spot where we lay them; we erect the enduring monumental marble, and plant the rose and myrtle, butshall we ever see them again? To this irrepressible question, revelation alone gives a clear answer. Yet nature furnishes interesting and corroborative analogies, to some of which the apostle alludes in his masterly argument in first epistle to the Corinthians. We deposit the seed; it dies, but it soon reappears in real life. Our flesh is sown -sown a natural body; and it is raised again-raised a spiritual body; raised in incorruption. The sun goes down, and darkness comes on; but wait! the brightness of a new day triumphs over the night. After the night of the grave, shall not the morning dawn? After winter-the cold, the night, the death of winter--comes the spring. It visits the same fields, and summer clothes the same valleys with robes of beauty. Will not spring visit the mouldering urn? What a striking emblem is the chrysalis! The worm envelops itself in a case and remains dormant for awhile; then, bursting its covering, comes forth a beautiful, winged creature, to soar above the earth with freedom. Will not the dead burst from their case, and walk forth in robes of beauty? Will not the fairest of earthly forms outrival the groveling worm? But ask the inspired teachers, and we get not inferential but authoritative statements. Question Enoch. His translation is the world's first picture of its last and greatest triumph; at once a picture and a prophecy. Inquire of Job. I see the venerable patriarch, with his long, white, but now disheveled locks, clad in a coarse cloth, sitting in silence. Property gone in a day; children swept off at a stroke; wife turned against him; malignant, loathsome disease upon him; his neighbors, under the guise of friendship, using hard, reproving words. But I see him rising from the ashes. He brushes back his hoary locks. Hark! I hear him speak: "O that my words were written in a book! that they were graven with an iron pen in the rock forever!" What words, dear, sad, but triumphant old man? "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another." Ask David. "My flesh also shall rest in hope." How speaks Isaiah. "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they rise; awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out her dead." As the dew-drop moistens the bud on the plant, opens it, and sends forth the beautiful flower, so the dew on thy dust shall bring from the opening bud the resurrection flower to bloom above forever. Inquire of Daniel. "Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake. Some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." "And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever." O may you and I be there to shine-to shine as the stars, forever and ever! And let us listen to the words of Jesus: "The hour is coming when all who are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth." When Martha suggested in reference to her brother, "I know he shall rise again at the last day"—the Jewish faith in the doctrine-Jesus confirmed it, and added to it by saying, "I am the resurrection and the life." "Marvel not, for the hour is coming when all that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." Paul repeats it: "There shall be a resurrection, both of the just and unjust," and argues it at length; and John's Apocalyptic visions of "the dead, small and great, standing before God," presented in the final book of Revelation, gives us the climax of the argument, and leaves nothing necessary to confirm us in this most inspiring faith of a prospective and glorious resur rection. How sublime these views suggested by our text: "These all died in faith." How rich the spiritual realizations! What sublimity of hope! How inspiring to the soul! Such a faith uplifts a man, is soul-girding, ennobling, unites to God, and opens heaven. By this we rise superior to foe, or fear, or death. Let consumption quaff my life's blood, let fever scorch and burn my brain, or the pestilence sweep by like a fierce sirocco, yet I shall live! Let fire burn my house, I have a better! Let floods of water destroy my property-all take wings and fly away, I have nnfailing treasures! How consoling, when we bury Christian friends, as we often must, for "Friend after friend departs Who has not lost a friend?" to realize that they are not lost; we know where they are, and how to find them! They are only gone in advance of us, and when the Master bids, we shall be permitted to join them. THE SAINTS DIE WELL. A HAPPY OLD AGE, AND A TRIUMPHANT DEATH. REV. BENJAMIN G. PADDOCK. ANY people, possibly indeed most, suppose that old men are necessarily peevish, sour, sorrowful, melancholy, or the like. That many old men are so, can not be denied. The tide of unchanged, unsanctified human nature, is doubtless in that direction; and hence the palpable fact, that there are aged people who feel nothing but darkness and gloom within themselves, and see nothing but darkness and gloom in all that surrounds them. The sources of sensual enjoyment now all dried up, they see no other sources open to them. The retrospect of the past, the facts of the present, and the anticipations of the future are alike unsatisfactory; so that the spontaneous inquiry is, "Who will show us any good?"-a query not to be solved by any light at their command. No wonder, then, that they are wretched. It would be wonderful, were it otherwise. Such, however, is not the destiny of those who "live not unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again;" who have dedicated themselves to God, and to humanity; in a word, have practically |