from a long line of ancestry. Inclination, disposition, temperament, whence come they? They are no new creation, they are our inheritance. Inquire whence you have derived your physical and mental characteristics, your features, constitution, tendencies, and you may find the secret of them buried in some long-forgotten grave. The souls of the departed live again in us, their children. Men are bound in fetters of appetite and passion that were forged centuries ago. As a storm a thousand miles out at sea drives the swell and surge of the Atlantic upon our coast, so we are borne upon the rush and sweep of forces that were begotten when the world was young. The fingers of the dead are always playing upon our hearts and evoking the music and the discords of our lives. The living must own the sway of those from whom soul and body are derived, in whom we were fashioned generations before we were born.

Plato

The law holds good upon the largest scale. The world in which we live is the work of ghostly fingers. What have we that the dead have not given us? What do we know that the dead have not taught us? What are we that the dead have not made us? and Aristotle fill the chair of philosophy in every college in Christendom. Hannibal and Cæsar still ride the storms of war, and muster contending hosts to battle. Every day Socrates is propounding questions and teaching morals in market places and on the street corners. The will of Peter the Great, if we may trust tradition, has dictated the policy of

Russia for two hundred years, and the fortunes of that mighty empire lay in the grasp of skeleton fingers. Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Webster are potent in the councils of the Republic to-day. John Marshall administers justice upon the bench of the Supreme Court. If we are lifted higher and see further than our fathers, it is because we have climbed upon their shoulders. The living execute the mandates of the mighty dead

"The dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns."

Moses gives law to the civilized world after thirty centuries have passed. In every worshiping congregation David leads the song of praise, and Peter and Paul and John preach the gospel every Sunday in ten thousand pulpits. Hush the voices of the dead and the sweetest music of earth would be put to silence.

The law prevails in individual experience. "The life of the dead," said Cicero, "is placed in the memory of the living." We canonize the dead. Every household, every heart has its saints. We strew their graves with flowers, we keep their memory green in our hearts.

"That's hallowed ground where mourned and missed The lips repose our love has kissed;

But where's their memory's mansion? Is't

Yon church-yard's bowers?

No! In ourselves their souls exist,

A part of ours."

When the sacred writer would incite us to patient endurance and strenuous endeavor in the Christian race, next to the vision of Jesus, who himself on earth trod this way before us, and now in heaven waits to award the prize, he finds no more inspiring thought than the great cloud of witnesses that compass us about, the spirits of the departed, who look down upon us from the heights which they have won. How many are there who have said with Mark Antony, as the earth was heaped upon the lifeless clay, "My heart is in the coffin there." The most sacred memories, the most potent inspirations known to earth are those which center in the grave. Trace to their sources the influences that have molded your character and shaped your life, and they lead you to the resting places of the dead. If I should ask you what are the mightiest forces that play upon your life to-day, whither would you lead me? Not to your place of business, not to the house of God, not even to your home, with its empty seats at the table, its broken circle-you would lead me from the haunts of the living to some quiet spot where the dead are sleeping, the little country churchyard or the crowded cemetery of the great city, and pointing to the name engraved on headstone or monument, would say, "The man, the woman, who made me, who is making me, what I am, lies there." The worship of saints, the veneration of relics, is only a mistaken recognition of the truth that "the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom in the dust."

In his "Philosophy of the Christian Religion," Principal Fairbairn tells us of his own experience. "He who writes these things once knew a man who was to him companion, friend, and more than brother. They lived, they thought, they argued together; together they walked on the hillside and by the seashore; they had listened to the wind as it soughed through the trees and to the multitudinous laughter of the waves as they broke upon the beach; together they had watched the purple light which floated radiant above the heather and together they had descended into the slums of a great city, where no light was nor any fragrance, and had faced the worst depravity of our kind. Each kept hope alive in the other and stimulated him to high endeavor and better purpose; but though the same week saw the two friends settled in chosen fields of labor, the one settled only to be called home, the other to remain and work his tale of toil until his longer day be done. But the one who died seemed to leave his spirit behind in the breast of the man who survived; and he has lived ever since, and lives still, feeling as if the soul within him belonged to the man who died." And he adds, "May we not say this experience is common and interprets the experience of the race?" Surely we can all testify from our own experience that the influence of those we loved was not buried in the grave but abides with us in sanctifying and inspiring power. Therefore is it "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all "?

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What is true of those who have gone before is true of us. "I shall not all die," said the old Roman. Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die," said the Master, "it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." Life is a seed that must be sown before it will yield its harvest. The power of life is not exhausted in the few fleeting years that we sojourn in the flesh. We cannot put forth the full measure of our strength until the earth has closed above us. We shall live in other hearts, work on in other lives that we shall move and fashion in generations yet unborn. We are the bridge that shall transmit the past to the future, and to-morrow shall have nothing but what is given by to-day.

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die." Even as our Master wrought for a few years in the flesh and now and forever carries on his work through those in whom his Spirit dwells, in whom he lives again, so do we, in our small way, on our humble scale, spend a little time in the labor of the flesh and thereafter wield a larger power and carry on a greater work through those whose lives have been molded and kindled by ours. The torch of knowledge, of liberty, of religion is passed from hand to hand throughout the generations of men, and because we were faithful in our place the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. We do not cease to serve when we cease to live. Of us shall be born