ferent a character! There was still noise, and pomp, and confusion, but it was no longer the "voice of them that make merry," or the "shout of them that feast," but a noise of weeping and of great wailing.

It was a noise, however, in this case, of hired music and hired musicians. After all, it was only professional mourning instead of professional mirth.

There is a fashion in our sorrows as well as in our joys. It seems as if pride would fain see the last of us, even after death. Even with death in the house, even with the funeral, it is not always, however, even then the last of us! Pride and fashion may follow us farther still. Is there not still the monumental tablet, descriptive of our virtues, while, alas! our vices may be written, unseen by men, in a more durable book? Are there not still eulogiums to follow, when our charitable bequests become known, in which, perhaps, our poor relations do not very heartily join? or that money we have hoarded so carefully, or those fair lands we have so zealously improved, or added to, or that magnificent mansion we have inherited or built, and called, with our

estate it may be, after our own name, and which we thought would last for ever; and those titles and honours we prized so dearly, and perhaps obtained by such tortuous means, all gone! All along we carefully kept out of sight, though we knew of those solemn words of the Psalmist : "Wise men also die and perish together, as well as the ignorant and foolish, and leave their riches for other. And yet they think that their houses shall continue for ever, and that their dwelling-places shall endure from one generation to another, and call the lands after their own names."

And now it has all come true! our house is left desolate, and our place knows us no more. Some few, perhaps, regret us, but the higher our station has been, the greater our wealth, the more exalted our position, the more are there to gain by our death. We have created a vacancy, or we have disappointed expectations; or we have relieved some one from the burden of our long sickness. In a few weeks, perhaps in a few days, another takes our place, all signs of mourning have disappeared soon after the disappearance of the hired mourners. We are supplanted in our position; a little longer, it may be,

We are We were

and others have supplanted us in the affections of those we once loved well, and who seemed to and did love us. at least more or less forgotten. wept and bewailed greatly, whether in reality or by deputy, it may be, but still, sooner or later, more or less, we are forgotten.

It is not to dishearten or discourage us, or to make us morbid and suspicious of others, that we should now and then let our thoughts rest upon such a subject as this. It has its use as well as its abuse. Some do not need it, many do. It reduces us all to one thought, namely, that it is useless and hopeless, vain, and foolish, and wicked, to let our hearts rest anywhere, or upon any one person, or upon any one thing, save and except GOD, and GOD only; to live for GOD, and to die in CHRIST; to love all, and to like all, and to enjoy all, and to bear all in Him, and for Him, and through Him. He alone never changes; He never forgets. Our good deeds, so far as they are accepted by Him, live on and do good only by virtue of union with Him. The affection which others have for us is only so far true and real, and lasting, as it is sanctified by Him.

When all else passes away He alone ever abides.

"Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day, Earth's joys grow dim, its glories fade away Change and decay in all around I see,

O Thou Who changest not, abide with me!"

ON DEATH CONSIDERED AS A SLEEP.

"JESUS said unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? Give place, the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth."—S. Mark vi. 39, &c.

IT

T was a common thing for the Jews to speak of death as sleep, and especially did they apply this term to the death of one quite recently dead. Added to this the death of this damsel, who was so shortly to be raised up again, was not in reality quite the same as the death of others, it lasted only as long as a short sleep. By calling her death by this name our dear LORD reminds us that death, according to the principles of religion and the language of Holy Scripture, is nothing else really but a sleep, that is, that we shall not wholly and entirely die, but as sleep ends in waking, so we must one day rise again and resume a new life by the re-uniting of our soul with our own body;

that this re-union will be eternal; that then a new order of things will take place, that in that order we shall be exalted or abased, happy or miserable, each according to his works, good or bad; that then the happiness will be perfect and the misery unutterable; and that both will be without end.

Such is our faith and our hope. Great truths are these, and well adapted to dry our tears on the death of our loved ones, our relations, our friends, or our neighbours. They are not dead, but sleep.

They are truths too, well adapted to soften the terrors which we may ourselves feel at the thought of our own death. They are well adapted to make us increase in holiness, in making us employ all the time of this present life solely and wholly with a view to that future life which awaits us, and which we await.

But the world laughs at the idea of a future life. It really believes that death is a never-ending sleep-a sleep from which none can awake. And so it is written here," they laughed Him to scorn, knowing that she was dead.” With the world the thought of death is either put aside or it is often made the subject of