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long pole, which two men bore on their shoulders. It was deposited in the Parsonage house at Grindelwald. with the Rev. Mr. Muller, who in addition to many other acts of sympathy and kindness, was willing to relieve the relatives and friends of Mr. Mouron from the painful yet necessary duties which the case demanded. According to the custom of the country, a wreath of roses was placed around the head of the deceased, and another in the form of a cross upon his breast. The Rev. Mr. Muller himself paid the last duties to him whom he had not known when living, but to whom he had been united by the ties of country and calling, and still more, by that sacred and invisible connection which in all places and all times forms the bond of union between the liberal and benevolent, making them labour in concert for the good of their fellow-creatures. May this worthy minister here receive the tribute of our heartfelt, eternal gratitude, and may he be blessed for all that he did in favour of our friend.

May those generous men also who at the risk of their lives, on the first news of the accident, ascended the glacier, and more particularly that individual among them who gave a still greater proof of his self-devotion by descending into the abyss to withdraw from the depths of eternal ice the body of our friend, and who thereby procured us the melancholy consolation of knowing that his death had not been attended with the sufferings, of which the mere imagination makes one shudder, may they receive our warmest thanks.

All having been arranged for the funeral ceremony, the procession left the minister's house, accompanied by the relations and friends of Mr. Mouron, the Syndic of the Commune, and the principal inhabitants of Grindelwald. At the moment when the corpse was being lowered into the grave, an avalanche of considerable size descended slowly from the side of the neighbouring mountain, as though nature itself were desirous of paying a tribute to the memory of him who had died in the contemplation of its wonders. From the burial ground the procession repaired to the church, where the minister performed a funeral service, according to the customs of the country, and expressed in a simple yet pathetic manner, the grief and regret which this unlooked for death occasioned. Alas! what might he not have said had he been personally acquainted with him whose loss he deplored. Mr. Mouron was as much distinguished by the excellence of his character, as by his talents, the Church regarded him as an able supports, and the country as one of her most devoted children. Under these two relations he will not easily be replaced, he never can be so in the affections of his friends.

P.S. We understand that the government of Berne have sent a medal to H. Burguer, in acknowledgment of the courage aud self devotion which he exhibited.

In the Church-yard of Grindelwald the following brief inscription remains as a memorial of the individual whose affecting catastrophe has been just related.

Aimé Mouron Min Du St. Ev. cher á L'eglise par ses talens et sa pieté, né á Chardonne Oct. 9 1791 admirant dans ces montagnes les ouvrages magnifiques de Dieu tomba dans un gouffre de la mer de glace Aug. 31 1821 Ici repose son corps retiré de l'abyme apres 12 Tours.

In presenting the above simple and touching narrative to our readers, we have not merely been desirous to offer them the gratification of seeing a narrative, which having appeared originally in a Swiss Periodical, has never before been presented to the English public; but we also feel that there are circumstances connected with the event, which may suit the purpose of the Beacon, and may afford profitable materials for reflection. Beyond this, though unwilling to assume the office of critic, where there is so much to disarm criticism, and to overwhelm every other feeling in pity and regret; regard for the best interests of man, may compel us to add a few remarks on the language of the narrative, from which we have not ventured to deviate in our translation.

It is possible, however, that some of our readers may not be aware of the nature of the glaciers, in which this melancholy event occurred; and may be pleased with a sketch, however brief, of one of the most wonderful scenes which the surface of our globe presents.

A glacier is a vast accumulation of frozen snow and ice, forming those Alpine vallies, round which the mountains, helmed with eternal snows raise their glit tering pinnacles and tower upwards to the sky. During the winter the snow swept by the blasts which carry desolation through those districts, lodges in these vallies to a depth hardly to be calculated. Masses likewise of frozen snow detach themselves from time to time from the mountains, and come thundering down the steep several thousand feet in height, and add to the accumulation. As summer advances, the snows on the lower part of the mountains are dissolved and pour down in torrents on the snowcumbered vallies at their feet. A vast sea of snow half melted, water half congealed is thus formed; and the frost of winter, which in those regions soon treads on the heels of summer, finds this expanse ready to be fixed in solid ice. Each succeeding winter adds to the deposit of snow. Each succeeding summer deluges the frozen mass with torrents descending from the summits; and the following winter binds all again together in the form of ice. In process of time, for we have taken the liberty of imagining the way in which a glacier was originally formed, and have gone therefore far beyond all that history records; the combined accumulations of winter and summer rase the surface of the glacier to such a height, that it rises above the margin of the basin in which it was first formed, and is ready to descend into some lower valley, some plain occupied by men, the seat of agriculture and civilization. The summer meltings of the frozen lake in this case begin to discharge themselves on the plain, and become the sources of rivers. In this way the Rhine, and the Rhone take their rise, and issue from the central height of Switzerland, to pursue their devious courses to the Southern and the Northern seas; but the drainage is not of itself sufficient to reduce the body of the glacier, from which it issues; and gradually the icy surface swells over the ridge, and spreads itself down the slope. The inequality of the pressure caused by this change of level immediately produces cracks, or crevices in this solid mass, of tremendous depth, and

sometimes of considerable width. The glacier assumes the appearance of a stormy sea, arrested by frost in a moment, and fixed in the form which its waves were wearing; and the ice seen from below and with the light reflected through it, takes that greenish blue colour which we see in unwashed flannel. In this state it becomes very dangerous to cross it. The ice no longer offers a level surface for the traveller, but is divided by fissures; sometimes so deep that the eye can hardly reach the bottom, and at the foot of which a torrent of water is heard rushing with immense violence down a subterraneous channel towards the mouth where the general drainage is discharged. The slip of a foot, the breaking of a pole, may in these situations occasion loss of life, and lead to a catastrophe like this which we have been bringing before our readers.

Perhaps we can hardly assist our readers to comprehend the nature of these scenes more effectually, than by transcribing the description given of the Mer de Glace, by one whose praise is in all the Churches the Rev. Daniel Wilson, now Bishop of Calcutta.

That distinguished prelate, when he was compelled, in the year 1823, to withdraw for a time from the duties of his parochial charge, as a clergyman and to seek restoration of a constitution almost worn out in labours, by a tour on the Continent; among other places visited Switzerland, carrying the characteristic energy of his mind into the common objects of a traveller's pursuit, and gave, as the moment passed, a record of his observations to amuse a sister whom he had left at home. We extract the following pages from his journal.

Twelve o'clock, Couvercle, Mer de Glace.—I am now writing on a spot, where, perhaps, never man wrote before, and whence I can scarcely look around me without terror. We have been walking and climbing, for five hours, ten or fifteen miles up hills and mountains of ice, snow, and impenetrable rocks, amidst chasms and torrents hundreds of feet deep. 1 am now on the heights of the Mer de Glace, nine thousand two hundred feet above the sea, seated on the ground, with my letter and pocket inkhorn before me, a rock for my writing table, and my small pocket book placed under my paper, to keep it a little steady. We have been surmounting immense fatigue and danger, ever since we left the chalet at seven. All other difficulties are nothing compared with those which surround us; and we have a descent of seven hours, not a little dangerous, to make, before we reach our inn. Still the extraordinary magnificence of the scene above, below, around us, when one can calmly look at it, seems to recompense us for every thing. If we get back alive, however, one thing I can veuture to assure you of, that the fatigue and terror are such as to prevent our ever coming up again. Chamouny, Eight in the Evening.-Thank God we have all returned safe. Let me now give you some notion of the day's journey. We were fourteen hours and a half on the road, and went forty miles; ten miles on mules, and thirty on foot; which thirty were in a perpetual course of ascents, descents, sliding and jumping. After leaving the chalet on Montanvert, in the morning at seven, we descended and crossed the éboulement or vast heap of granite and sand, which intervened between that and the glacier. The path was frequently on the surface of a shelving rock of slate, three inches wide, with a precipice at our feet. When we came to the glacier, or Mer de Glace itself, we had new difficulties of every kind to surmount; and in the course of our progress three vast

éboulements to climb over. When we reached the summit of the mountain, which is called the Couvercle, about noon (nine thousand two hundred feet), we were so exhausted with heat and fatigue, that we threw ourselves on the scanty grass growing on the rock, as if we were dead. After an hour and a half's rest, and a dinner on the provisions carried for us by the guides, we set off on our return. Nothing can describe the day's journey; the simple fact of walking thirty miles on ice and rock, with declivities, crevices, gulfs, ice-torrents. &c. seems sufficiently terrific, but can convey to you no adequate idea of the real

scene.

Enough, however, of our fatigues. Now, to give you some account of the Mer de Glace. It is an enormous glacier, forty-five miles long, and two wide, and rising to an inaccessible height. We only ascended the point commanding the finest view. It gave me the idea of a sea in a storm suddenly frozen, or choked with snow and ice. We saw nothing but congealed waves or rather mountains of frozen water. The ice is not clear and smooth, but mixed with sand and stones, and on the surface alternately melted and re-frozen every twenty-four hours. In all this sea, changes are continually taking place, from the causes I assigned in a former letter:-a single day's rain or snow alters infallibly a variety of places. The most fearful things are the fentes, crevices, or fisures, some fifty feet wide, others just beginning to form themselves; others like a well, three or four hundred feet deep, with an impetuous torrent pouring down them, and working like a mill at the bottom; together with thousands of rivulets formed by the summer's sun on the surface. As the masses of ice descend, the superincumbent rocks and stones descend with them. These are gradually carried along; some travel five hundred feet down the immense glacier in a single year. The foot of the Mer de Glace is in the valley of Chamouny, whence the river Arveiron flows, which joins itself with the Arve, and pours into the Rhone, near Geneva.

To travel on this sea of wonders was in itself dangerous enough a single inadvertent step might have been fatalthe extraordinary skill and experience of the guides, however, (for each person has his separate one), make accidents extremely rare. The views which we witnessed were enchanting. The deep azure of the sky in one of the finest days ever seen; the vast region of ice which the sun gilded with his rays, and the panorama of snow-clad Alps, rising stupendously all around, are really beyond my powers of description. They made us forget all our fatigues. The union and contrast of the scenes in nature apparently the most irreconcileable-and all beheld for the first time, and under the most favourable circumstancesproduced an impression in which what was wonderful and pleasing had an equal share with the sublime and stupendous.

Such is the description given of a glacier by a man equally distinguished for quickness of perception and depth of feeling.

We return from his letter, however; trusting that our readers are now as familiar with the scene as a brief description can make them, and resume our reflections on the narrative of Mr. Mouron's death.

The first impression left upon the mind in reading this story must be sympathy with the poor sufferer, during the few minutes while life remained and sensation was not extinct. Imagination can hardly figure a situation more dreadful; a change more tremendous. But one minute before, he was standing in the fulness of health and cheerfulness, gazing on the wonders round him, elated with the

success of the efforts he had made, and anticipating fresh enjoyment as his ramble advanced. That moment passed, and the breaking of the pole, on which his body was propped, precipitated him a stunned lacerated being, into a gulf from which escape was impracticable.

Surely we cannot deny that this is but the picture of that still more awful change which oftentimes occurs with as little of previous thought or preparation in the case of sudden death. We see man going forth to his labour, or in the pursuit of pleasure; as full of health and strength, and still less aware of the danger of his condition; and in a moment we hear that some internal change, such as no eye could discern, or some external accident, against which no forethought could guard, has snapped the thread of life, and plunged him into an abyss from which there is no return. Few of our readers may probably have occasion to explore that country of wondrous beauty, and awful dangers, where Mr. Mouron met his death; but it is hardly necessary to say, that men often carry about within them the seeds of a death as sudden, if not so painful, as his was; and that as to the time and manner, no one can say where he shall meet or not meet his appointed day.

Beyond this, the mind cannot avoid fancying what must have been the feelings of the man thus hurled alive into that abyss which was to be his tomb. Swept by the freezing torrent which roared along its subterraneous channel from the last glimmering light of day, shut out in a moment from that bright blue sky on which he had been gazing; then wedged in thick ribbed ice, and chilled to death by all that which was round him and above him and below him; what a position was this for one whose heart yet beat with the energies of life, and whose mind was still capable of considering the realities of his lot. There might have been thoughts which flew with the rapidity of light, to the home he had inhabited, to the family, the friends, whom he had left; and drew with equal quickness the comparison between the past and the present, between the comforts that had been possessed, and the utter entire desperation that remained; but there could not have been much scope for anguish such as this, and, we may hope, that the mercy of God shortened a state of suffering which might well seem insupportable to a being like man.

If the persevering energy of the people on the spot had not succeeded in recovering the body, it must have remained where it fell, and preserved from decay by the icy covering spread over it, it might have continued undecomposed and unchanged till that time when the elements themselves shall melt with a fervent heat; and the glaciers, which now seem to stand like the everlasting hills, shall flow down, or be lost in vapour. In their present state they form a kind of connecting link between the beginning and the conclusion of this earth's employment. As to the period of their formation history is silent; as to the extent of their con

tinuance imagination supplies nothing. Art, science, can never attempt to subdue their imperishable masses, and if the glacier advances, as the observation of the natives leads them to believe, for seven years, and then recedes for the same number of years, the change in its extent is independent of all that men may do or may have left undone; and agricul ture knows the limit where its efforts must be stayed, and where all hopes of return for labour must yield to the power of eternal ice. But there is a day ap proaching when the Lord will come in the clouds of Heaven, and the earth, with all the works that are therein, will be burnt up. At that day the dominion of cold, which has been established by successive centuries, will suddenly give way. These frozen seas will become liquid; and the substances, which they have held imprisoned in their depths, will rise to the surface and be discovered.

There are many, no doubt, who in the course of the ages elapsed since the formation of these glaciers, have been ingulfed like Mr. Mouron, and have been lost as he was in those frightful chasms by which their glassy surface is seamed and severed. Lost to the eye of men, irrecoverable by all that human affection can devise, or human power can do, they have remained in a state over which time seemed to have no influence, and are perhaps to this moment in lineament, form, appearance, what they were at the day when they perished. We know that there is a time appointed when the sea will give up her dead; and the glaciers will then restore the bodies they have been holding, as it were in deposit; but till that time arrives, which will be the period of general restoration, the ice must spread its glassy covering over all that it entombs, and the eye will not be able to follow the objects of its regard or veneration.

The anxiety shewn by the peasants to recover the body of Mr. Mouron is a pleasing trait, well suited to a Christian people.

case

Cases, no doubt occur, where men are found evincing indifference as to the mortal remains of their fellow-creatures, and such cases may be found among the most highly polished, as well as among the most uncivilized of mankind; but in either man has lost sight of his nature, and has become brutish in his own imagination. The poor ignorant Hindoo leaves the body of a parent to float down the Ganges, and dismisses all thoughts of the relation which once bound him to the deceased. The philosopher of the atheistic school, the materialist, the sensualist fly from the memorials of mortality, and endeavour to forget the body which can no longer minister to their comfort.

The Christian, unlike these, sees in the body of man the temple of the Holy Ghost; reverences the poor fleshly carcase for the sake of the inmate who once inhabited it; and sorrowing, not as those who are without hope, feels the solemnities of a funeral sanctified by the feelings it produces.

We must not neglect to remark the state of the guide during the interval which passed between the

loss of Mr. Mouron and the recovery of his body. Alas! how many are there who will be overwhelmed, not relieved, by the discoveries made at the general resurrection. How many will rise to testify against the dishonesty, the cruelty, with which they have been treated; to complain of the unkindness which made life a burden, and hastened the approach of death; and whose rising will be a witness against the sins that have been concealed.

It is a painful memorial of what many must expect; while it may also be taken as exhibiting the way in which some of the afflicted and despised of the earth shall be vindicated from charges which they had not the ability to disprove, and shall be acknowledged as true and faithful servants by their Heavenly Master.

The calm and simple tone in which the story is concluded seems like the end that remains for the people of God. Of them it is said they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them. The labours and sufferings of life are forgotten in the grave; and the hope of a joyful resurrection is the foretaste and pledge of the happiness prepared for them above.

It is painful to close these remarks with a word of censure, but it is necessary to point out deficiencies where deficiencies exist, if those deficiencies affect the best interests of man. We cannot but regret that in this touching narrative no reference should be made to our dear Redeemer's name and mediation; and simple and affecting as the story is, we feel that this deficiency has the same effect upon it, as the absence of sunshine would have upon a summer's prospect.

The Deity is named, and it is fit He should be seen in all his works, and remembered in the midst of his wonders; but why should the God of nature be named to the exclusion of the God of grace? or why should the inferior wonders of creation shut out from our view the inconceivable wonders of Redemption? Would Mr. Mouron have gazed on the splendid scene around him with less delight, if he had exclaimed, as Cowper does, "My Father made them all;" or would he have enjoyed his ramble less, if his reflections had been raised from the things of Earth to the things of Heaven? The very inscription on his tomb bears the mark of the same cold stinted system of religion. He is commemorated as a Minister of the Gospel, distinguished for talents and piety; and we sincerely hope, what we have no reason to question, that those talents were sanctified by their entire dedication to God, and that his piety was the piety of faith, the fruit of the Spirit, a piety rising far above the dry morality or sentimental feeling of the world, and drawn from the love of God as manifested in Jesus Christ.

the only truth to be inculcated? Were there no hopes to be encouraged; no better resurrection to be named? The glacier seems to have reached the heart of the writer, and to have chilled all the warmth of life within it, when he penned this frigid and cheerless memorandum of the recovery of the friend he had lost.

How much superior to this jejune and secular notice is the simple confession which strikes the eye on the stones of our Country Church Yards! "In the hope of a blessed resurrection." What magnifience in the prospects which are thus disclosed! What an inheritance contemplated; what blessedness implied for the humble individuals whose bodies sleep beneath.

Surely when we compare the memorials which have been chosen for themselves by different persons, we must say "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen. Yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glory in his presence."

SCRIPTURAL STUDIES.

No. v.

THE FIRST DEATH. How awful, yet not unfrequently how beautiful, how very beautiful the aspect of death!

"He who hath bent him o'er the dead,
Er'e the first day of death has fled,
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress;
Before decay's effacing fingers,

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,
And marked the mild, seraphic air,

The rapture of repose that's there :"

So sang one, whose splendour of poetic genius must rank him as the second of Britain's bards, but whose fine, but, alas! prostituted and perverted powers, were too often enlisted in the cause of impiety, too often stooped to pander to the taste of the licentious and the vicious.

The lines are beautiful: but are they true? How important is it that when we are reading the writings of a human author, we should frequently pause to ask ourselves this simple question, and whether he addresses us in the nervous and majestic diction of eloquent prose, or in the magic and melodious strains of eloquent poetry, beware of allowing a "concord of sweet sounds, to warp, seduce, and blind our judgment, beguiling us into an assent to propositions, or an ap

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But the conclusion of the inscription is singularly cold and unsatisfactory, "Here rests his body-probation of sentiments, which, when impartially

drawn from the chasm after twelve days." And is this all, we must ask, that a Christian monument shall say of a Minister of the Gospel who lies interred beneath it? Was this the only fact to be noted?

weighed in the balance of truth, will be found wanting.

Against the two first, and the four last of the beautiful lines in question, we have nothing to

allege. But let us not be betrayed by the harmony of the two others, (as it is possible the poet himself was, without pausing to consider whether he was writing truth or error,) into an admission that the day of death is in all cases the last day of "distress," or, in any case a day of "nothingness." Believing in the soul's immortality, not because the soaring mind of Plato grasped the mighty truth, as he mused beneath the shade of his plane tree on the banks of Ilyssus, and clothed those "breathing thoughts" in "words that burn,” -not from any philosophical or metaphysical disquisitions concerning its nature, which any have indulged,-not because the doctrine is so sustaining, so soothing, so consoling, so animating, as I stand by the grave of my buried child

ren,

or turn "my mind's eye" upon loved christian friends, for whom the eye of my body would look in vain in this world, but because I see the doctrine, written as with a sunbeam in the Word of God,-I cannot but reject as a mere poetic fiction the assertion that the day of death is a day of "nothingness." The soul is in as real and actual a state of existence the very moment after it has quitted the body, as it was before.

Equally unfounded is the assertion that the day of death is necessarily and indiscriminately the last day of distress. Certainly this appears to be implied in the language employed; and no language can possibly be more opposed to that of the Bible. The conclusion is a painful one: but, it is one to which we must come, unless we are resolved to reject the testimony of God, that in too many instances the day of death is a day of distress, far more poignant, than ever was, or could be experienced, on this side of eternity.

Not so to the believer in Jesus; to him, of whom we may say, If his sun has gone down in this world, it has risen in another and a better, with a beauty and a brilliancy to which it never could have attained here. And though, when we stand by the deserted clay, and mark the air of desolation which the absence of the soul has thrown around it, and think how those eyes which once sparkled with intelligence, have lost their lustre, and how those limbs which moved with such elastic energy in the cause of piety and benevolence, are stiff and motionless, and how that hand which was accustomed to return with such warmth the pressure of our own, is overspread with an icy coldness, and how that tongue whose accents were so melodious in friendship's ear, and the recollection of which still seems to touch a responsive chord in friendship's bosom, lies mute like a harp unstrung and voiceless, we cannot suppress those feelings of awe which the aspect of death inspires, we recognise in the placid expression of the features, an emblem of that holy repose which the spirit enjoys, and are ready to

echo the inspired exclamation, "Oh! death' where is thy sting? Oh! grave, where is thy victory ?"

"I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord!" Thus blessed was the first man that bowed beneath the stroke of death. Abel died in the Lord; a meek, humble believer in the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." We have something more than conjecture to support this assertion; something more than a mere charitable and consolatory hope in connection with the first death. We have the authority of inspiration. "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh." (Heb. xi. 4.) "The Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering:" and it is not improbable that this testimony was given by the descent of fire from Heaven upon the sacrifice, as in the case of that which was offered at the consecration of Aaron and his sons to the priesthood; of David's at the threshing floor of Ornan; of Solomon's at the dedication of the temple; and of Elijah's at Mount Carmel. With respect to this indeed, we have no express information; and would not, therefore, speak in the language of confidence: but, it is evident that, whatever was the particular method by which God was pleased to testify his acceptance of Abel and his offering, it was such as to leave no room for questioning the fact either in the mind of Abel, or in that of his brother.

Here, as in numerous other instances with which we meet in the book of God, enough is not revealed to satisfy curiosity: but, enough is revealed to guide the sincere enquirer in a matter in which he is immediately and personally concerned. It was, as we have seen, the principle, under the influence of which it was presented, that constituted the great and essential distinction between his offering and that of Cain; faith. Faith in whom? Faith in what? Faith in the promised seed of the woman, who was to bruise the head of the serpent; faith in the efficacy of that future all-atoning sacrifice; of which his of fered lamb was a type and figure. That sacrifices were instituted by God himself in Paradise; there is strong ground for believing in the recorded fact, that our first parents were, after the fall, clothed in "coats of skins." When we remember that animals were not slain for the purpose of food till a subsequent period, the conclusion is natural and reasonable, that the skins here mentioned were those of animals slain in sacrifice, as significant emblems of the sacrifice of Calvary; "a shadow of things to come," of which the body" was "of Christ." Certain it

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