V. God by the dispensation before us, is coming personally to ourselves, warning us of the uncertainty of life, and calling upon us ever to be prepared for death. This world is a world of death. The march of time, like some vast and endless funeral procession, is bearing us all onward to the tomb. If we look to the past, nation after nation is moving to eternity, as wave follows wave to dash and die upon the shore. Their untold millions flit, like graveyard shadows before us, and even while we gaze upon them they are gone from our view forever. And if from the past we turn to the present, here too the king of terrors is ever at his work. All around us graves are opening; monuments are rising; friends are departing to the world of spirits. Even while we cling to them, a mighty and unseen hand tears them from us, and their faces are seen and their voices are heard no more. In all the past, in all the present, generation after generation passes in silent and spectral march before us, warning us by their shadowy forms, "what shades we are, what shadows we pursue," and solemnly beckoning us after themselves, on to the judgment. Of every death it is true that it unmasks the world to us-that it shows us the uncertainty of life, and the frailty of all human hopes. Of every grave it is true that

"'Tis the pulpit of departed man,

From which he speaks-his text and doctrine both, 'Thou too must die, and come to judgment "'"'

But when God, as now, sends the warning from the high places of the earth, it comes to us, though with the same lesson, yet with a deeper and more monitory tone. When we think what were the hopes and prospects of the departed-how the future spread out in brightness before him-how he had just laid his hand on the prize that had been hoped for for years; and then when we think how, after four short weeks, he is torn from it forever-how the garland has withered in his grasp, and the joy has crumbled as he touched, it, and the pomp of life is exchanged for the stillness of the grave, and the admiring gaze of men for the searching glance of God, and the estimates of earth for the just judgment of Jehovah in the light of all these things, oh, how little, how as nothing does this world appear compared with that to which he is gone and we are hastening! Could the heavens be rent, and

the voice of the departed now be heard from the world of spirits, first of all would he not warn us that we too are to die and to pass to the judgment—that heaven or hell is before us—that the grave, which is but the passway to the one or the other, will soon open beneath our feet, and that we, as in a moment, may sink to it, no more to rise but to life or death eternal? Gone, as he has gone, from the pomp and pageantry of earth to the realities of an endless state, and having gazed upon the blessedness of the redeemedhearing the harping of their harps, and witnessing their joys and rapture which no tongue can tell, and there, too, having looked down upon the horrors of the bottomless gulf, where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched, and the wrath of God burns forever, if now he could come back, would not his first warnings be of the soul, and of God, and the judgment, and heaven, and hell? Would not earth, with all its glories, now seem as nothing to him-its wealth as but glittering dust-its pleasures but as the empty wind-its honors but as a fading flower, a flitting dream, blown by a breath away forever? The soul, the soul, the never-dying soul-would not this be his only and his burning theme, and would he not warn you in God's name, and by the realities that he has witnessed, to work out your salvation with fear and trembling" before it be forever too late? In his last, and as now we may almost call it, his dying message, from the station where God had placed him, he earnestly commends Christianity—not some vague and indefinite religion, but the religion of the cross-the atoning system of a crucified Redeemer to this widely extended people, and among them to ourselves. And now may we not imagine him bending from another world, and as a preacher from eternity reiterating to us, by all the sanctions of the unseen state, that in the cross, in the cross, is our only hope, and asking, with solemn earnestness, of each one of us, "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul, and what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?'' Yes we may-we may; and what is far more, we may hear God's voice sounding to us from this opening grave and this departed spirit, warning us to prepare to prepare! As by every death, so pre-eminently by this, He warns us that our time is short, that our salvation is at hazard, and that if we would ever be saved, we must do with our might what our hands find to

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do"-" working out our salvation with fear and trembling"-laying hold on life while yet it may be ours. This is the great end of all God's dealings, the solemn and personal close of every appeal and warning and truth, whether from His providence or Word or Spirit-that you, too, are to die, and that you prepare for it now, while yet you may. Look not away then from this solemn truth, when it is thus written on the heavens above, and echoed from the earth beneath, and when ere-long it shall gleam upon you from the flaming heavens, and the convulsed and dissolving world, and the burning throne of judgment. Look not away from the thought that die you must, and when, you cannot tell. Here in this house of prayer-around this grave which God has opened by the coming hour of your own death-by our meeting at the judgment seat, I entreat you to listen to these warnings, to prepare for the coming of the Son of Man. Speeding as you are to the dying chamber, and the winding-sheet, and the final hour, hurried as you soon may be, as in a moment, to the bar of God, and the retributions of an eternal state, again I entreat you to prepare, before your probation is forever wasted, and your soul forever lost!

THE FUNERAL OF THE SOUL.

BY H. B. HOOKER, D.D., FALMOUTH, MASS.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment.—Matt. xxv. 46.

As we are all familiar with the event of death, so are we also with its usual accompaniment, a funeral. We associate these events together, as the one naturally and necessarily follows the other.

But while we recognize the fact, and often think of the funeral of the body, is there not also what may be called the funeral of the soul? If natural death occasions a necessity for one of these events, why may we not believe spiritual death creates a like necessity for the other? If it be a fact, that natural death causes such a change in the state of the body, that funeral rites must be performed, and that the body must be removed from all connec

tion with the living, is it anything unreasonble to believe that spiritual death produces such a state of the soul that funeral solemnities should be performed over that, and that there should be a removal of it from the society of all the holy and the happy?

In proof of such a fact, the text and context are clear and decisive. Hence, my present topic is THE FUNERAL OF THE SOUL. I. VARIOUS FACTS ARE IMPLICATED IN SUCH AN EVENT, IMPOR

TANT TO BE NOTICED.

1. That the kindest efforts have been made to prevent the necessity of such a funeral. Who does not strive to arrest the hand of temporal death? Had you ever a departed friend whose funeral you would not have prevented had it been in your power?

And has there not been much done in the kindest way, to prevent the funeral of the soul? Was there not an atoning sacrifice, of astonishing value, once offered for the very purpose of preventing this melancholy event? Has not the Holy Spirit, the Heavenly Dove, been spreading his wings in all directions to stay such a catastrophe? Has there not been sent to the human race a whole volume of every variety of dissuasives from such courses as would lead to such an event? And has there been, anywhere in a Christian land, a human soul that has not been surrounded by kind friends who have been deeply interested in preventing its funeral? Was there not warning, and entreaty, and prayer? And could that benevolence have prevailed in leading the sinner from his sins, would there have been the funeral of the soul?

2. It is implied in the funeral of the soul, that all the efforts of kindness to prevent it have failed. So we judge when we attend the funeral of the body. As we look upon the wreck and ruin of death, we see that all the tenderness of love, and all the assiduity and self-denial of kindness have been baffled, and that disease and death have had their triumphant way.

So the idea of the funeral of the soul carries with it the idea that, whatever have been the offices of Christian kindness to prevent that dreadful event, they have all failed. The love of Christ, as a dissuasive from its sins, has been set before it in vain. The gracious Spirit has striven without success. All the rebukes of conscience availed not. And Christian admonitions were wasted on unyielding hardness of heart.

3. The funeral of the soul is most decisive of the fact, that it is

actually dead! We do not bury the living body, but only the dead. The smallest degree of life stays us. The pulsations may be so feeble as to require the closest and most delicate scrutiny to detect them. But, if they exist at all, there will be no burial. The procedure of the burial is founded on the most perfect assurance of death.

So it is because the soul is dead that there is a funeral of it. No such solemnity would occur if there were the least spark of spiritual life. The slightest pulsation of such life would save it from that awful solemnity. Never was there the burial of a soul that was not dead. No such event could possibly occur under the government of God.

row.

4. With the funeral of a soul we cannot avoid associations of sorIt is always so in reference to the body. Its burial ! How often it implies the burial of sweetest happiness and fondest hopes! That scene pours a tide of bitterness through bereaved bosoms. How many sighs! How many tears! But before there can be the funeral of a soul, what sadness there has been over it! Over its spiritual death were there not the tears of a compassionate Saviour? And have not the true people of God, in all ages, mourned over those around them whose sinful courses were hastening them to a burial in the bottomless pit? Every association of thought with the funeral of a soul is one of sadness. Tears, more bitter, have never been shed in this world, than those of pious friends over those dear to them, who, by persistence in sin, were wrapping themselves in the winding-sheet of moral death, and making the funeral solemnities at the Great Day a dreadful certainty !

5. The funeral of a soul suggests itself as an inevitable consequence of its spiritual death. It is so with the body. The rites we perform, in connection with burial, are associated with the unavoid

The state of nat

able necessity of committing it to the grave. ural death is at war with the health and life of survivors, and there must be a separation of the dead from us. We obey this law as imperious beyond question or resistance.

So of the funeral of the soul. The event of spiritual death having occurred, there is no alternative. The funeral of a soul im

plies its removal from the society of all the pure and the good in the universe. It must be removed. It has no more elements of har