living." Then it is true, that they live there; and they yet speak to us. From that bright sphere, from that calm region, from the bowers of life immortal, they speak to us. They say to us, "sigh not in despair over the broken and defeated expectations of earth. Sorrow not as those who have no hope. Bear calmly and cheerfully thy lot. Brighten the chain of love, of sympathy; of cominunion with all pure minds, on earth and in heaven. Think, Oh! think of the mighty and glorious company that fill the immortal regions. Light, life, beauty, beatitude, are here. Come, children of earth! come to the bright and blessed land!" I see no lovely features, revealing themselves through the dim and shadowy veils of heaven. I see no angel forms enrobed with the bright clouds of eventide. But "I hear a voice, saying, write, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest for they rest, from their labours, and their works, works of piety and love recorded in our hearts and kept in eternal remembrance-their works do follow them." Our hearts, their workmanship, do follow them. We will go and die with them. We will go and live with them forever!

Can I leave these meditations, my brethren, without paying homage to that religion which has brought life and immortality to light; without calling to mind that simple and touching acknowledgment of the great apostle, "I thank God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Ah! how desolate must be the affections of a people, that spurn this truth and trust! I have wandered among the tombs of such a people; I have wandered through that far-famed cemetery, that overlooks from its mournful brow, the gay and crowded metropolis of France; but among the many inscriptions upon those tombs, I read scarcely one; I read,-to state so strik

ing a fact with numerical exactness-I read not more than four or five inscriptions in the whole Pere La Chaise, which made any consoling reference to a future life. I read, on those cold marble tombs, the lamentations of bereavement, in every affecting variety of phrase. On the tomb of youth, it was written that "its broken-hearted parents, who spent their days in tears and their nights in anguish, had laid down here their treasure and their hope." On the proud mausoleum where friendship, companionship, love, had deposited their holy relics, it was constantly written, "Her husband inconsolable;" "His disconsolate wife;" "A brother left alone and unhappy" has raised this monument; but seldom, so seldom that scarcely ever, did the mournful record close with a word of hope; scarcely at all was it to be read amidst the marble silence of that world of the dead, that there is a life beyond; and that surviving friends hope for a blessed meeting again, where death comes no more !

Oh! death dark hour to hopeless unbelief! hor to which, in that creed of despair, no hour shall succeed! being's last hour! to whose appalling darkness, even the shadows of an avenging retribution were brightness and relief; death! what art thou to the Christian's assurance? Great hour of answer to life's prayer; great hour that shall break asunder the bond of life's mystery; hour of release from life's burden; hour of reunion with the loved and lost; what mighty hopes, hasten to their fulfilment in thee! What longings, what aspirations,-breathed in the still night beneath the silent stars; what dread emotions of curiosity; what deep meditations of joy; what hallowed imaginings of never experienced purity and bliss ; what possibilities, shadowing forth unspeakable realities to the soul, all verge to their consummation in thee!

Oh! death! the Christian's death! what art thou, but the gate of life, the portal of heaven, the threshold of eternity!

Thanks be to God; let us say it, Christians! in the comforting words of holy scripture: "thanks be to God who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ!" What hope can be so precious as the hope in him? What emblems can speak to bereaved affection, or to dying frailty, like those emblems at once of suffering and triumph, which proclaim a crucified and risen Lord; which proclaim that Jesus the Forerunner, has passed through death, to immortal life? Well, that the great truth should be signalized and sealed upon our heart by a holy rite! Well, that amidst mortal changes, and hasting to the tomb, we should, from time to time, set up an altar, and say, "by this heaven-ordained token, do we know that we shall live forever!" God grant the fulfilment of this great hope-what matter all things beside ?-God grant the fulfilment of this great hope, through Jesus Christ!

ON THE NATURE OF RELIGION.

XXI.

THE IDENTITY OF RELIGION WITH GOODNESS, AND WITH A GOOD LIFE.

IF A MAN SAY, I LOVE GOD, AND HATETH HIS BROTHER, HE IS A LIAR; FOR HE THAT LOVETH NOT HIS BROTHER WHOM HE HATH SEEN, HOW CAN HE LOVE GOD WHOM HE HATH NOT SEEN ?-1 John iv. 24.

If there is any mission for the true teacher to accomplish in this age, it is to identify religion with goodness; to show that they are the same thing, manifestations, that is to say, of the same principle; to show, in other words and according to the Apostle, that no man is to be accounted a lover of God, who is not a lover of his brother. It is, I say again, to identify religion with morals, religion with virtue; with justice, truth, integrity, honesty, generosity, disinterestedness; religion with the highest beauty and loveliness of character. This, I repeat, is the great mission, and message of the true teacher to-day. What it may be some other day, what transcendental thing may be waiting to be taught, I do not know; but this, I conceive, is the practical business of religious instruction Let me not be misunderstood, as if I were supposed to say that this or any other mere doctrine, were the ultimate end of preaching. That is, to make men holy. But how shall any preaching avail to make

now.

men holy, unless it do rightly and clearly teach them what it is to be holy? If they mistake here, all their labour to be religious, all their hearing of the word, Sabbath keeping, praying, and striving, will be in vain. And therefore, I hold that to teach this, and especially to show that religion is not something else than a good heart, but is that very thing; this, I say, is the burden of the present time.

I use now an old prophetic phrase, and I may remark here, that every time has its burden. In the times of the Old Testament, the burden of teaching was, to assert the supremacy and spirituality of God, in opposition to Idolatry. In the Christian time, it was to set forth that universal and impartial, and that most real and true love which God has for his earthly creatures, in opposition to Jewish peculiarity and Pagan indifference and all human distrust; a love, declared by one who came from the bosom of the Father, sealed in his blood, and thus bringing nigh to God, a guilty, estranged, and unbelieving world. The burden of the Reformation time, was to assert the freedom of religion; to bring it out from the bondage of human authority into the sanctuary of private judgment and sacred conscience. But now, religion having escaped from Pagan idolatry and Jewish exclusion and papal bondage, and survived many a controversy since, has encountered a deeper question concerning its own nature. What especially is religion itself? This, I say, is the great question of the present day. It underlies all our controversies. It is that which gives the main interest to every controversy. For whether the controversy be about forms or creeds, the vital question is, whether this or that ritual or doctrine ministers essentially to true religion; so that if a man embraces some other system, he is fatally deficient of the vital