while before he died, he seemed to be transported with the most sublime conceptions of the other life, and the utter insufficiency of the things of this world. With intense emotion, he exclaimed, 'O, what should I now do, what can any one in my condition do, without hope in Christ? Millions of gold, millions of acres, are worthless, and I count them as dross.''

TOPLADY'S DEATH.

His death was happy and triumphant, as his life had been holy and devoted. When, in answer to his inquiries, his doctor informed him that his pulse was getting weaker, he replied, with a smiling countenance, "Why, that is a good sign that my death is fast approaching. And, blessed be God! I can add, that my heart beats stronger and stronger every day for glory!" He frequently called himself the happiest man in the world. "Oh," said he, "how this soul of mine longs to be gone! its cage, it longs to take its flight. like a dove! then would I fly away to the realms of bliss, and be at rest for ever!"

Like a bird imprisoned in
Oh! that I had wings.

Shortly before his death, waking from a slumber, he said: "Oh, what delights! who can fathom the joys of the third heaven?" And when blessing and praising God for continuing to him his understanding, so that he could still think with clearness, he broke out, with rapturous delight, "And what is most of all, is His abiding presence, and the shining of His love upon my soul. The sky is clear; there is no cloud. Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!"

Less than an hour before his departure, he said: "It will not be long now before God takes me, for no mortal can live" (and he burst into tears of unutterable joy as he spoke), "no mortal can live after the glories God has manifested to my soul."

BISHOP MORRIS' DEATH.

ON the Friday morning before his death he suddenly grew worse, and inquired of his wife if she thought he would die before night. She said that she had no such thought; but added, "We can not tell what a day may bring forth." He replied, "Whatever the result may be, all is well-all is well."

On Saturday morning, he was observed to draw the bedquilts closely around him, as if cold. On being asked, by his wife, if he thought it was a chill, he said, "Why, no, wife; it is a death coldness."

On the following day, Sabbath, Phillip Phillips, accompanied by a few friends, spent an hour with him in singing and prayer. He greatly enjoyed this service, and frequently, during the singing, said, "How sweet! How beautiful!" On Monday evening, when his wife expressed a fear that he might soon be called away, he said promptly, "All is right; all is right." She asked him, then, how the future looked, and his cheerful, ready response was, "The future looks bright!" And in this frame of mind he lingered until Wednesday, September 2d, at noon, when he slept in Jesus.

THE GLORIOUS BEYOND.

VICTOR HUGO ON IMMORTALITY.

E were dining at Victor Hugo's. Four of us were believers, and four atheists-not speaking of the ladies, who were all too clever to be infidels. Victor Hugo, of course, was among the believers.

"To believe in God is to believe nothing," said one of the atheists.

"To believe in God is to believe everything," cried Victor Hugo; "it is to believe in the Infinite, and in one's immortal soul. I will prove it to you."

His face was bright with a heavenly halo. You know he was born with the century. His face is crowned with white hair, but it is the volcano under the snow. His eyes shine like burning coals; his brow is arched like an Olympian's; the nose is refined, with distended nostrils; the mouth is eager and smiling, still full of valiant teeth; the chin finishes a profile designed after the laws of artistic grammar. It is a well-made head, on a robust body. By robust, I do not mean enormous. He has not the stature of a giant, nor the torso of a Hercules. But he is a man of steel, with no sign of old age about him. He has all the

agility, the suppleness, the ease, and grace of his best years. He is now enjoying his third or fourth youth; I do not doubt he will see the century through.

"I feel in myself," he continued, "the future life. I am like a forest which has been more than once cut down. The new shoots are stronger and livelier than ever. I am rising, I know, toward the sky. The sunshine is on my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but heaven lights me with the reflection of unknown worlds. You say the soul is nothing but the resultant of bodily powers. Why then is my soul the more luminious when my bodily powers begin to fail? Winter is on my head, and eternal Spring is in my heart. There I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets, and the roses, as at twenty years. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite It is marvelous, yet simple. It is a fairy tale, and it is history. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and verse; history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song-I have tried all. But I feel I have not said a thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave, I can say, like so (many others, 'I have finished my day's work,' but I can not say, 'I have finished my life.' My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight to open with the dawn. I improve every hour because I love this world as my fatherland, and because the truth compels me, as it compelled Voltaire, that human divinity. My

me.

work is only beginning. My monument is hardly above its foundations. I would be glad to see it mounting, and The thirst for the Infinite, proves

mounting forever.

infinity."

-Arsene Houssaye.

THE GLORY BEYOND.

REV. H. W. BEECHER.

"I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness."-Psalms 17: 15.

WHAT the other life will bring, I know not, only that I shall awake in God's likeness, and see Him as He is. If a child had been born, and spent all his life in the Mammoth Cave, how impossible it would be for him to comprehend the upper world! His parents might tell him of its life, and light, and beauty, and its sounds of joy; they might heap up the sands into mounds, and try to show him, by pointing to stalactites, how grass, and trees, and flowers grow out of the ground, till at length, with laborious thinking, the child would fancy he had gained a true idea of the unknown land. But when he came up, some May morning, with ten thousand birds singing in the trees, and the heavens bright, blue, full of sunlight, and the wind blowing softly through the young leaves, all a glitter with dew, and the landscape stretching away, green and beautiful, to the horizon, with what rapture would he gaze about him, and see how poor were all his fancyings, and the interpretations which were made within the cave, of the things which grew and lived without; and how would he wonder