with the certainty that death will deprive you of them. Do you exult in your youth ?-you will see the green hillocks of many who died younger than you are: the daisy has bloomed and faded over them. Is manhood the object of your desire?—the sepulchres of men will tell you that manhood is not exempt from mortality. Do you fancy that peace will be the allotment of your age?-the memorials of aged men will assure you that " man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards ;" and that "great tribulation" is the portion of the most worthy of mankind.

If you wish for riches, the carvings and gildings of the rich man's monument are disfigured with cobwebs, and mouldering away. If renown be the object of your ambition, the armed knight lies in stone, unnoticed, and his achievements are covered with the dust of death.

If, then, youth, manhood, and age must die— if riches, and honours, and worldly possessions must perish for ever, how can you reflect on death without pain, and apprehension, and terror?

The young and the old, the rich and the poor, the wise man and the fool, the brave man and the coward, all shrink from death, because it takes away all which they possess. He alone who has hopes beyond the grave can reflect on death with composure, with peace, and with joy. The Ptolemies, who have had temples erected to their memory the Cæsars and Alexanders, whose fame has been spread in the earth, would, in the hour of death, have given all their conquests, their riches, and their renown, for the hope of the poor man, whose soul magnifies the Lord, and whose spirit rejoices in God his Saviour.

How gladly would th' illustrious dead that lie
Inshrin'd in pomp, and pride, and pageantry,

Could they look back, and mark with thoughtful brow
The littleness of all things here below,

How gladly would they, while with honest shame

They read the marble that extols their fame,
Erase the records where their praise is given,

And there inscribe an humble hope of heaven.

Get, then, this hope; for rubies are as dust when compared with it. Ten thousand times ten thousand have been blinded by the golden dust of the earth, and millions upon millions have been deceived by the perishable vanities of life: but be not you blinded; be not you deceived so far as to grasp at the shadow of earthly good, and to lose the substantial hope of eternal life.

Go, I say, into the churchyard! If I could, I would persuade, I would drive, I would compel you to go there; for you will never seek in sincerity the fulness of heaven till you are convinced

of the emptiness of earth. I am talking fast, but I am talking for your good. I am talking to myself as well as to you; and I am talking, not for time only, but also for eternity.

DISAPPOINTMENT.

We are in the hands of ane that kens better what is good for us, than we ken what is for ourselves. WALTER SCOTT.

I WOULD not give a rush for his qualifications, be he old or young, who cannot endure a disappointment. There are a thousand disappointments in life with which we must expect to meet; we should, then, be prepared for them. Bring up a boy as it were in a band-box, and he will shake and shiver at the morning and evening breeze; but if he has been brought up before the mast, and waged war with the bounding breakers, he will flinch neither from the storm nor the tempest.