lies should be removed at once and together to the " spirit land"—but reflection and faith have soon arisen to check the remonstrances and questionings of anxious and yearning affection, and have soon shown, as they usually do, that God's providence is wiser than our own hasty presumption. Were families removed together, how certainly would our social affections gather up and concentrate themselves upon those narrow circles, and all the evils-the peculiarities, the prejudices, the selfish and exclusive attachments-of that limited intercourse, to which we are already sufficiently liable, would be inflicted on society; and all the benefits of a wide and generous diffusion and reciprocation of sentiments and feelings, would be cut off from the social body. If, again, the future world were opened to us, it might produce in us an utter distaste to this; it might disturb the well-balanced and wisely-ordered influences, under which we were made to act in the present state. If we could see, what we so ardently long to behold, beyond this veil of earthly shadows, we might have no eyes for the scene around us; we might he rapt in meditation, when we are called to the action and trial of all our virtues.

It was evidently designed that we should be trained up here, by a severe and lofty discipline, for some glorious state of being and enjoyment hereafter. The moral economy under which we are placed, the spiritual life on earth, was not designed to be vision, but faith: not rapture, but trial. The departure of friends and kindred to another world, irresistibly draws our thoughts thither, and constantly renders us more indifferent to acquisitions and objects here. Heaven claims our treasures, that our hearts may be there also. Faith, moreover, in the invisible, the spiritual, the eternal, is the appropriate faith of beings whose welfare lies in the invisible mind, whose nature is spiritual, and whose destiny, immortal. It is meet that we should be trained by the influences of a world which we see not, and from which no sound reaches us. It is our happiness, also, not only to love God, but to love him with the fervour and assurance of perfect trust. Love is ever doubtful without that trial; and it is but an impassioned feeling, without that quality of absolute confidence.

Yet a little while, therefore, are we required to wait, till we can behold those objects and those beings, on whom, next to God, it is right that our hearts should be set. The interval will not be too long for the trial of our faith, and the preparation of all our virtues; not too long to prepare us for the blessedness of a future life; nay, it may not be found too long to prepare us to die, as the Christian should die. To meet the last hour calmly, to resign all the objects which our senses have made familiar and dear, in the lofty expectation of better things for the mind, is itself a great act of faith, and one for which many days' reflection and experience may not be too much to prepare us. To take our last look at the countenances of beloved friends and companions; to close our eyes to the bright vision of nature; to bid adieu to earth, sky, waters; to feel, for the last time, the thrill of rapture with which this fair and glorious scene of things has so often touched the soul: this is an hour for faith unshaken in the immortality of virtue, and for trust unbounded in the love of God, and for the triumphant assurance which long tried and lofty experience alone can give. The feelings of the infidel Rousseau have seemed to us thus far natural, and such as even a

Christian may entertain. When he apprehended that his last hour drew near, he desired the windows of his apartment to be opened, that he might have the pleasure," as he said, "of beholding Nature once more. How lovely she is!" he exclaimed; "how pure and serene is the day! O Nature! thou art grand indeed!"* Yet not as Rousseau died, does the Christian die; but with a better trust.

And with that trust, with a firm confidence in the perpetuity of all pious and virtuous friendships, there is much, surely, to mitigate the pain of a temporary separation. Let us remember, too, that we do submit to frequent separations in this life, that our friends wander from us over trackless waters, and to far-distant continents, and that we are still happy in the assurance that they live. And though, by the same providence of God that has guarded them here, they are called to pass beyond the visible precincts of this present existence, let us feel that they still live. God's universe is not explored when we have surveyed islands, and oceans, and the shores of earth's spreading continents. There are other regions where the footsteps of the happy and immortal are treading the paths of life. Would we call them back to these abodes of infirmity and sin? Would we involve them again in these toils, and pains, and temptations? Or shall we sorrow for them as those who have no hope? No; we would rather go and die with them. What do we say? We will rather go and live with them for ever!

But the awful entrance to the world of spirits-may still be our exclamation - how dark and desolate is that passage! It is a fearful thing to die. Nature abhors dissolution!

Let something of this be admitted, but let it not be too much. Does nature abhor dissolution? Behold the signs of decay and dissolution which winter spreads around us. Behold nature in her annual deaththe precursor of renovated life. But we will not argue from emblems. We will admit that a living being must naturally dread to part with life. But he dreads to part with life only in a great measure as he dreads to part with everything that is his. He is averse to the loss of property, and in some instances, almost as much so, as to the loss of life itself. He is reluctant to part with any one of his senses; and this reluctance, compared with the natural dread of death, is in full proportion to the value of that organ. Let us rationally look at the subject in this light. Doubtless, we dread the loss of the sense of hearing, for instance; and when that is entirely gone from us, hearing is dead. We dread the loss of sight; and, that light extinguished, seeing is dead. Thus one faculty after another departs from us, and death is at work within us, while we say that we are in the midst of life. So let us regard it. So let us familiarize to our minds the thoughts of death, and feel that this dreaded enemy, dreaded, partly, because imagined to be so distant and unknown, has already made its lodgment in our frame, and, by familiar processes, is approaching the citadel of life. As disease is making its inroads upon us, and the system is wearing out, as the acuteness of sensation is failing us, and the vigour of bone and muscle is declining, let us say and feel, that we are gradually approaching the extinction of this animal life. Let no sceptic doubts, let no thoughts of annihilation mingle with our apprehensions of mortality; let us believe as Christians,

* Grimm's Correspondence.

that not the soul, but only the body dies, and death cannot be that dread and abhorrence of nature which we make it.

We fear that we have occasion to crave the patience of our readers for the length to which our discussion has run; but we would dwell upon this point a moment longer-the natural dread of death. It seems to us strange, it seems as if all were wrong, in a world where, from the very constitution of things, death must close every scene of human life, where it has reigned for ages over all generations, where the very air we breathe, and the dust we tread upon, was once animated life—it seems to us more strange and wrong, that this most common, necessary, expedient, and certain of all events, should bring such horror and desolation with it; that it should bring such tremendous agitation, as if it were some awful and unprecedented phenomenon; that it should be more than death-a shock, a catastrophe, a convulsion; as if nature, instead of holding on its steady course, were falling into irretrievable ruins.

And that which is strange, is our strangeness to this event. Call sickness, we repeat, call pain, an approach to death. Call the weariness and failure of the limbs and senses, call decay, a dying. It is so; it is a gradual loosening of the cords of life, and a breaking up of its reservoirs and resources. So shall they all, one and another, in succession, give way. I feel" will the thoughtful man say-"I feel the pang of suffering, as it were piercing and cutting asunder, one by one, the fine and invisible bonds that hold me to the earth. I feel the gushing current of life within me to be wearing away its own channels. I feel the sharpness of every keen emotion, and of every acute and farpenetrating thought, as if it were shortening the moments of the soul's connexion and conflict with the body." So it is, and so it shall be, till at last, the silver cord is loosened, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel is broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns unto God who gave it."

66

No; it is not a strange dispensation. Death is the fellow of all that is earthly; the friend of man alone. It is not an anomaly; it is not a monster in the creation. It is the law, and the lot of nature.

With patriarchs of the infant world, with kings,

The powerful of the earth, the wise and good,"
Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales,

Stretching in pensive quietness between ;

The venerable woods, rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks,

That make the meadows green, and poured round all,

Old ocean's grey and melancholy waste

Are but the solemn decorations all,

Of the great tomb of man."

But of what is it the tomb? Does the spirit die? Do the blessed affections of the soul go down into the dark and silent grave. Oh! no. "The narrow house, and pall, and breathless darkness," and funeral

train-these belong not to the soul. They proclaim only the body's dissolution. They but celebrate the vanishing away of the shadow of existence. Man does not die, though the forms of popular speech thus announce his exit. He does not die. We bury, not our friend, but only the form, the vehicle, in which, for a time, our friend lived. That cold, impassive clay is not the friend, the parent, the child, the companion, the cherished being. No, it is not; blessed be God, that we can say, It is not! It is the material world only that the earth claims. It is dust" only, that "descends to dust." The grave! let us break its awful spell, its dread dominion. It is the place where man lays down his weakness, his infirmity, his diseases, and sorrows, that he may rise up to a new and glorious life. It is the place where man ceases-in all that is frail and decaying-ceases to be man, that he may be in glory and blessedness an angel of light.

66

Why, then, should we fear death, save as the wicked fear, and must fear it? Why dread to lay down this frail body in its resting-place, and this weary, aching head, on the pillow of its repose? Why tremble at this-that in the long sleep of the tomb, that body shall suffer disease no more, and pain no more, and hear no more the cries of want, nor the groans of distress-and, far retired from the turmoil of life, that violence and change shall pass lightly over it, and the elements shall beat, and the storms shall sigh unheard, around its lowly bed? Say, ye aged and infirm! is it the greatest of evils to die? Say, ye children of care and toil! say, ye afflicted and tempted! is it the greatest of evils to die?

Oh! no. Come the last hour in God's own time! and a good life and a glorious hope shall make it welcome. Come the hour of release! and affliction shall make it welcome. Come the hour of re-union with the loved and lost on earth! and the passionate yearnings of affection, and the strong aspiration of faith, shall bear us to their blessed land. Come death to this body: this burdened, tempted, frail, failing, dying body! and to the soul - thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory! -to the soul come freedom, light, and joy unceasing! come, the immortal life!" He that liveth"-saith the Conqueror over Death-" He that liveth and believeth in me, shall NEVER DIE!"

AMERICAN MORALS AND MANNERS.

WE propose to offer some observations, in this essay, on American Morals and Manners. There is, at this moment, a very extraordinary crisis of opinion in Europe, with regard to this country. Our national character is not only brought into question, but it is brought into question as furnishing grounds for a decision upon the form of our government, upon the great cause of republican institutions.

For reasons, then, deeper than those which concern our national reputation, and yet this is not indifferent, this subject deserves attention. We have no desire to overrate the importance of this country; but it is undoubtedly the great embodiment of the leading principle on which the history of the world is to turn for many years to come. When, at some future time, a philosophical history of the present age shall be written, this country will occupy a place in it, the very converse of that which it now holds in the thoughts of most men in the Old World. That future time will far better understand the map of human affairs, not to say our literal geography, than does the present. It will be seen that the tree of freedom, planted on this Western continent, has shot its roots and fibres through the whole of Europe; beneath the soil of all her ancient and venerable institutions. Whether it shall stand, and flourish, and lend strength to the world; or whether, overturned by whelming floods, it shall draw the world down with it, or leave it rent and torn by the disruption of its ties-this is the question. We are not to be told that we are now speaking great words with little meaning. Those ties, we affirm, exist. The humbler classes in Europe may know definitely but little about us. But from out of this unknown world, from beyond the dim and spreading curtain of the sea, has come to them a story that they will never forget. They have heard first of a people who can eat the fruit of an unentailed soil, of their own soil; and we can testify from observation, that that word, ownership, is like a word of magic to them. They have heard, next, of a people who can read; to whom is unrolled the mysterious page of knowledge, the lettered wisdom of all mankind. Yes, and they are demanding and gaining that boon, that American privilege, from their own governments. They have heard, once more, of a people, who are their own governors, who make their own laws and execute them, and whom no man with impunity can wrong or oppress. Yes, in the lowliest cabins of Europe, they have learned all this. Let all the crowned powers of the world unteach it, if they can. no dream to them; it is a fact. There is example for it. And this one example is of more weight than all the books of theory that have been written from the time of Plato to this day.

This is