ll death, but which is but the initiation into the mysteries
of the Beyond. It is this which, even aside from religious aspirations
and fears, wraps our departure in an awful sublimity. To die that we may
KNOW--to give up the transitory, the perishing, the earthly, that we may
grasp the all-enduring, the imperishable, the divine; to pass from
blindness to far-stretching, unimpeded sight! to be able at a single
glance to count the very stars of heaven, and to see the network of laws
which bind them in their places, and control, not only their motions,
but the minutest particulars of their internal organism; and, above and
greater than all, to comprehend the relation between the soul and its
God. Here is an existence worthy of spirit which is the image of its
God--an existence which will give full scope for the exercise of those
faculties which can only act so feebly here--the only existence for
which any soul should pine. Strange that humanity should so shudder at
the thought of death! And stranger still, that the searcher for wisdom
should not seek it in the preparation for that future life where alone
true wisdom can be gained.

And as for questions such as this which we have been discussing, it is,
after all, enough for us to know that all will some day be revealed;
enough for us to know that there are other duties incumbent upon us,
other interests more vital to our spiritual well-being, than that of
peering into these hidden mysteries, which do not at all concern our
present existence, which do not promote our present or future happiness,
or help us forward on our eternal road.

EGBERT PHELPS.

REPLY TO THE ABOVE.

MATTER AND SPIRIT.--Our contributor, under this title, has entered upon
a boundless field of speculation, in which we have no thought of
following him to any considerable distance. A metaphysical discussion of
this character would scarcely be appropriate to the pages of THE
CONTINENTAL; and our readers would doubtless find the controversy
uninteresting, if not altogether unprofitable. We, however, cheerfully
insert the paper offered by Lieutenant Phelps, on account of the spirit
of earnest piety and love of truth which seem to pervade it; and we
shall confine ourselves here to the briefest possible comment which will
enable us to make understood our grounds of dissent.

We demur to the suggestion that our ideas, as expressed in the July
number, have necessarily any affinity to 'the dogmas of pant