And with them the Being Beauteous, With a slow and noiseless footstep And she sits and gazes at me With those deep and tender eyes, Uttered not, yet comprehended, O, though oft depressed and lonely, If I but remember only Such as these have lived and died! HENRY WADSWORTH LOngfellow. FAITHFUL heart! sweet peace hast thou In God's eternal bosom now! Dust sinks to dust in calm repose; The love that was thy life while here Is now thy heavenly atmosphere; God's heaven enspheres us round, and thou, So then we cry, Farewell, and Hail! CHARLES T. BROOKS. WHAT Vast HAT a momentous interest is given to our whole earthly life by the thought that it is passed in the presence and communion of the whole spiritual family! To my mind there is hardly a text of Scripture, or form of speech, that rolls on with such a depth and fulness of meaning as these words: "Seeing that we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses." and bewildering is the philosophical speculation which tells us that we cannot lift a finger without moving the distant spheres. But far more grand and unspeakably solemn is the thought that our daily lives, our conduct in lowly and sheltered scenes, our speech and walk in the retirement of our homes, are felt through the universe of everliving souls, that the laws of attraction and repulsion that reach through all orders of being ex tend to our least word and deeds, that in every worthy, generous, holy impulse all heaven bears part, — that from the trail of our meanness and selfishness, our waywardness and levity, all heaven recoils. Let the august witnesses, the adoring multitude, in whose presence we dwell and worship, arouse us to growing diligence in duty, and awaken in us increasing fervor of spirit, that we may run with patience the race that is set before us, and, found faithful unto death, may receive the crown of life. ANDREW P. PEABODY. THE HE seasons when Jesus enjoyed the nearest communion with heaven deserves our special regard. When was it that angels and glorified spirits became manifest in his society? Not when the multitudes thronged him, and children sang hosannas in the temple, — not during his few and brief seasons of ease and outward success. They first came to him after his forty days' temptation, when he had contended in lonely prayer with every allurement which could draw him aside from his appointed work. Again, on the mount, came Moses and Elijah. And of what talked they with him? Not of crowns, or of applauding multitudes, but of his approaching agony and death. Again, when in Gethsemane he wrestled with the severest powers of evil, and won the victory before his hour had come, there appeared an angel from heaven strengthening him. Are not these things written that heaven may seem nearest to us when trials most abound, in loneliness and weariness, in desertion and agony, that we may bring the unseen world into the clearest view when the power of evil is the strongest, and that, when no earthly voice gives us comfort or a godspeed, we may feel that angels minister to us and glorified spirits urge us heavenward? ANDREW P. PEABODY. |