they are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed. This inward hope completes the measure of the Christian's consolation. Faith and prayer had given quiet to his mind, but the hope of heaven excites it to joy, and raises it from serenity to rapture. He feels himself to be immortal. His affections being set on his eternal good, temporal evil has lost its power to destroy his happiness. Infirmity and disease may render life weary; but his thoughts are not confined to life; they wander through eternity, they commune with God, their home is in heaven. Death may approach while in the midst of prosperity, having a thousand dear ties; it may be in the very opening of life's happy day, with every thing that earth and friendship can give, to make life delightful and desirable. But even then, the heart that has learned to exalt itself by the visions of futurity, is able to disarm the king of terrors. The hope of Christ is mightier than the fear of the grave. At that hour of nature's faltering, when dread and consternation have appalled even the bold, we have seen even a young, frail, feminine spirit, for which the common adversities of life seemed too rude, able to look round without dismay, collected, calm, serene, smiling amid pain, and the conqueror of the grave. Others tremble and weep; but the sufferer, as if no longer a sufferer, can speak quietly, and comfort them; can lead them to God, in words of trust and consolation, and so sink into that dreaded silence of the grave, as if it were indeed but passing to its home. Such power has God given to man to triumph over death! So kindly has he provided strength for the soul that puts its trust in his Gospel. It is in vain to deny that life has its troubles, and death its alarms. We cannot disguise the bitterness of the cup which man is called to drink. Nor can we help the cry, that, if it be possible, that cup may pass from us. But God has done better for us than to cause it to pass. He has made it the cup of immortality. Trial and grief are the preparation for glory. The grave is the gate of heaven. The death of the body is the emancipation of the soul. Emancipated souls are to reunite in a better and happier society. The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there can no evil touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seem to die, and their departure is taken for misery; but they are at peace; for God has loved them, and received them to Himself, and they shall rejoice forever. And if ever a holy hallelujah of solemn praise should ascend from man to God, it might well be at the departure of one who had died in the triumph of Christian hope, and the burial of whose body is but the signal of the spirit's welcome by angels into heaven. Tears might fall as we sang, but not the less real would be our praise, and not the less perfect our consolation. These are the consolations of religion. Through these does God send help in trouble. Faith, prayer, hope, these three, and the greatest of these is, I do not know which is the greatest; they form the threefold cord which cannot be broken. Faith could do little if it were not expressed in prayer and answered by hope. Prayer without faith is but an idle breath of wind, and without hope is only the groaning of despondency. Hope has no anchor, if faith have not supplied one, and no wings, if she borrow none from devotion. Separately, they are as the lungs without the heart, or the heart without the blood; without the others, each is weak and inefficient; but together, they make up the living, vivifying system; they create peace where pain has destroyed it; they let in the tranquil light of heaven on the soul, upon which the suffering of earth has cast down darkness that may be felt. IMMORTALITY. To me there is but one objection against immortality, if objection it may be called, and this arises from the very greatness of the truth. My mind sometimes sinks under its weight, is lost in its immensity; I scarcely dare believe that such a good is placed within my reach. When I think of myself, as existing through all future ages, as surviving this earth and that sky, as exempted from every imperfection and error of my present being, as clothed with an angel's glory, as comprehending with my intellect, and embracing in my affections, an extent of creation compared with which the earth is a point; when I think of myself, as looking on the outward universe with an organ of vision that will reveal to me a beauty and harmony and order not now imagined, and as having an access to the minds of the wise and good, which will |