purer air? Shall we grudge an escape from the hovel into the palace of the Great King? "Children," said the mother of John Wesley, the last thing she uttered, "Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God." Music sounds best after sunset. It is no time to mourn here, while angels clap their wings, and the whole family above cry, Welcome home! Who would keep his tears for the coronation day?

Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord!

"Thus star by star declines,

Till all are passed away;

As morning high and higher shines

To pure and perfect day.

Nor sink those stars in empty night,

But hide themselves in heaven's own light."

Shall not this abate the dread of dying? That dread is instinctive; it is deep. By most, death is regarded as ultimum terribilium, the extremest of things terrible; but is it not gain, great, unspeakable gain, to the child of God, to die? And shall we hesitate to encounter the little inconvenience of stepping ashore from this shattered vessel? Why so in love with perils? Whence this fondness for buffetings, sickness, and protracted wreck? Whence this aversion to enter the haven of everlasting bliss?

For all saints in Christ Jesus, death has been unstinged. What if the serpent, deprived of its fangs, do hiss?- he is harmless.

"How hard it is to die!" remarked a friend to an expiring believer. "O, no, no!" he replied; "easy dying, blessed dying, glorious dying!" Looking up at the clock, he said, "I have experienced more happiness in dying, two hours this day, than in my whole life. It is worth a whole life to have such an end as this. O, I never thought that such a poor worm as I could come to such a glorious death!

Chrysostom, when banished, said to a friend, "You now begin to lament my banishment, but I have done so for a long time; for since I knew that heaven is my country, I have esteemed the whole world a place of exile. Constantinople, whence I am expelled, is as far from Paradise as the desert whither they send me."

A few moments before he expired Edmund Auger said to a friend, "Do you see that blessed assembly who await my arrival? Do you hear that sweet music, with which those holy men invite me, that I may henceforth be a partaker of their happiness? How delightful is it to be in the society of blessed spirits! Let us go. We must go. Let me go." O, death! where is thy sting?

What is it to die? To believers, it is to drop the body of this death, and to put on a joyous immortality; to pass from darkness to everlasting sunlight; to cease dreaming, and commence a waking existence; yes, to awake in the likeness of Godsatisfied, fully and forever satisfied. What is it to die? To feel the last pang, to shed the last tear, to raise the shield of faith against Satan's last dart. It is to go home to God; to open the eyes on the enthroned Mediator; to close the ears upon all discords, all sounds of woe, all the falsehoods, the maledictions, the blasphemies of earth, and open them to the harmonies of heaven. What is it to die? It is to stop sinning, to cease grieving the Spirit and grieving the Saviour, to close up the inconsistencies of terrestrial profession, and commence a forever blameless life in bliss. What is it to die? To lean on the Almighty for a few steps down a narrow valley; to step out of Jordan, upon the borders of the Better Land; to pass up to the New Jerusalem; to enter by one of those gates of pearl into the city; to have ten thousand angels come and utter their cordial welcome; to see - O, let me die the death of the righteous! -to see the Saviour smile benignantly, and to hear him say, "Well done, good

and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!" That is to die.

But, in order to that, there needs be "an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast," a most earnest "looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith." It was not in the hour of martyrdom that Stephen first beheld the Lamb of God. The religion that is good for nothing in life, is good for nothing in death. The time will come, when we shall need a strong arm near, and a firm faith to grasp it. The sentimentalities of fading flowers, and falling leaves, and of moonlight musing, all the prettinesses of poetry, all natural amiabilities, and mere natura charities, however cultivated, will avail nothing in the day when God shall require the soul—in the day when we stand at his bar. Faith alone will suffice, an appropriating, justifying faith; an operative, vitalizing faith; a hearty, adoring faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who stands as Redeemer and Advocate at the right hand of God.

I count the hope no day-dream of the mind,

No vision fair of transitory hue,

The souls of those, whom once on earth we knew,
And loved, and walked with in communion kind,
Departed hence, again in heaven to find.

Such hope to nature's sympathies is true;
And such, we deem, the holy word to view
Unfolds; an antidote for grief designed,
One drop from comfort's well. 'Tis true we read
The Book of life; but if we read amiss,
By God prepared, fresh treasures shall succeed
To kinsmen, fellows, friends, a vast abyss
Of joy; nor aught the longing spirit need
To fill its measure of enormous bliss.

BISHOP MANT.

MANY seem to conceive of heaven mainly as a rendezvous for friends; that, immediately upon entering its mansions, the soul is engrossed in recognizing and being recognized by earthy associates; that future bliss consists almost entirely in the renewal of domestic attachments, and in the mere luxuries of amiable intercourse. Not a few, who entertain more scriptural views, still betray an ex