upon every memorial of them, broods a melancholy dimness and
silence. They recede more and more from the associations of the living.
New tides of life roll through the cities of their habitation, and upon
the foot-worn pavements of their traffic other feet are busy. Their
lovely labor, or their stately pomp, is forgotten. No one weeps or cares
for them. Their solicitous monuments are unheeded. The companions of
their youth have rejoined them. The young, who scarcely remembered them,
are giving way to another generation. The places that knew them know
them no longer. "This, this," their solemn voices preach to us, "is the
changeableness of earth, and the emptiness of its pursuits!" They urge
us to seek the noblest end, the unfailing treasure. They bid us to find
our hope and our rest, our only constant joy in Him, who alone, amid
this mutability and decay, is permanent,--in God!

Well, then, is it for us to listen to the voices of the dead. By so
doing, we are better fitted for life, and for death. From that audience
we go purified and strengthened into the varied discipline of our mortal
state. We are willing to stay, knowing that the dead are so near us, and
that our communion with them may be so intimate. We are willing to go,
seeing that we shall not be widely separated from those we leave behind.
We will toil in our lot while God pleases, and when he summons us we
will calmly depart. When the silver cord becomes untwined, and the
golden bond broken,--when the wheel of action stands still in the
exhausted cistern of our life,--may we lie down in the light of that
faith which makes so beautiful the face of the dying Christian, and has
converted death's ghastly silence to a peaceful sleep; may we rise to a
holier and more visible communion, in the land without a sin and without
a tear; where the dead shall be closer to us than in this life; where
not the partition of a shadow, or a doubt, shall come between.

MYSTERY AND FAITH

"For we walk by faith, not by sight." II Corinthians v. 7.

It needs only common experience, and but little of that, to convince us
that this life is full of mystery, and at every step we take demands of
us faith. For at every step we take we literally walk by faith; in every
work we do we must have confidence in something which is not by sight,
in something which is not yet demonstrated. Skepticism carried to its
ultimate consequences is the negation of everything. It closes up