of the Pilgrim Psalm, "I will lift up mine eyes unto
the hills. Whence should help come to me? My help cometh from Jehovah,
who made heaven and earth."

As the casket was borne to the grave, the setting sun, which for the
last half hour had been hidden by a mass of clouds, burst out in full
splendor, gilding the mountain-tops and shedding his parting rays upon
the group around the tomb, the stricken family, the weeping neighbors
and friends, especially the women whom for some years past she had been
in the habit of meeting at her weekly Bible-reading, and some of whom
had walked each week for miles along the mountain roads, through storm
and heat, to drink of the living waters which flowed at her touch.

Dr. Vincent, holding in his hand a little, well-worn volume, and
standing at the foot of the grave, spoke substantially as follows:

I am glad, my friends, that I am not one of those who know God only as
they find Him identified with the woods and fields and streams. If this
were so, I should turn from the grave of this beloved friend, and go my
way in utter heart-sickness and hopelessness; for Nature would but mock
me to-day with her fulness of summer life. These forest-clad mountains,
that waving grain, those woods, pulsating with the hum of insects and
with the song of birds, all speak of life, while we stand here at the
close of a precious and useful human life, to lay in the dust all that
remains of what was so dear, and so fruitful in good.

But, thanks to God, we are not here as those who face an insoluble
riddle. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the resurrection of
the dead; and with this key in our hand, we stand here at the grave's
mouth, and looking backward, interpret the lesson of this closed life;
and looking forward, gaze with hope into the future. Thus Nature becomes
our consoler instead of our mocker; a type, and not a contradiction of
human immortality. Thus, and only thus, do we find ourselves at the
standpoint from which Christ viewed nature when He said, "Except a corn
of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone; but if it die,
it bringeth forth much fruit"; the standpoint from which Paul viewed
nature when he wrote, "That which thou sowest is not quickened except it
die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall
be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain; but
God giveth it a body as He willeth, and to every seed his own body.