e my
life, I beheld adjudged to the agonized and parching death! Far in the
mighty crowd I saw the light rest and glimmer over the cross; I heard
the hooting mob, I cried aloud, I raved, I threatened--none heeded me--I
was lost in the whirl and the roar of thousands! But even then, in my
agony and His own, methought the glazing eye of the Son of Man sought me
out--His lip smiled, as when it conquered death--it hushed me, and I
became calm. He who had defied the grave for another--what was the
grave to him? The sun shone aslant the pale and powerful features, and
then died away! Darkness fell over the earth; how long it endured, I
know not. A loud cry came through the gloom--a sharp and bitter
cry!--and all was silent.

'But who shall tell the terrors of the night?' I walked along the
city--the earth reeled to and fro, and the houses trembled to their
base--theliving had deserted the streets, but not the Dead: through the
gloom I saw them glide--the dim and ghastly shapes, in the cerements of
the grave--with horror, and woe, and warning on their unmoving lips and
lightless eyes!--they swept by me, as I passed--they glared upon me--I
had been their brother; and they bowed their heads in recognition; they
had risen to tell the living that the dead can rise!'

Again the old man paused, and, when he resumed, it was in a calmer tone.

'From that night I resigned all earthly thought but that of serving HIM.
A preacher and a pilgrim, I have traversed the remotest corners of the
earth, proclaiming His Divinity, and bringing new converts to His fold.
I come as the wind, and as the wind depart; sowing, as the wind sows,
the seeds that enrich the world.

'Son, on earth we shall meet no more. Forget not this hour,--what are
the pleasures and the pomps of life? As the lamp shines, so life
glitters for an hour; but the soul's light is the star that burns for
ever, in the heart of inimitable space.'

It was then that their conversation fell upon the general and sublime
doctrines of immortality; it soothed and elevated the young mind of the
convert, which yet clung to many of the damps and shadows of that cell
of faith which he had so lately left--it was the air of heaven breathing
on the prisoner released at last. There was a strong and marked
distinction between the Christianity of the old man and that of
Olinthus; that of the first was more soft, more gentle, more divine.
The heroism of Olinthus had something in it fier