be stoics. He who wept on the grave of Lazarus will not frown on the sorrows of the bereaved. But we should not "sorrow as those who have no hope." Since our friends have gone to be with Jesus, and we shall meet them there.

2. To contemplate death with less fear and aversion than is generally felt towards it. There is something repulsive in the article of death. But it is the way to our Father's house, to the glorious realities that await us in the better world.

3. To renewed animation in our present labors. Present toil will sweeten future rest. Present work done for God will increase the reward that God himself will

bestow upon us. "Be not weary," &c.-The resting time will soon come. There are some to whom death will not be such a sleep. Are you in Christ?

THE DEATH OF THE OLD.

REV. THOMAS BINNEY.

Your fathers where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever? ZECH. i: 5.

THESE

HESE words are appropriate to the occasion, and are in harmony with the feelings under which we have assembled. They suggest :

I. The great law under which we receive and possess existence that we die : the law of mortality under which we were born.

All men die and all things die. It could not well be otherwise. Where there is vegetation there must be decay. Where there is production and reproduction there must be death. And had man continued innocent in a world in which the species was to increase and multiply, there

must of necessity have been some mode of removal; for a limited space never could have accommodated indefinite numbers. And in the process of removal, man must have been changed, translated, transfigured, and made immortal. Nature and animals may have died before, and therefore to man it was said, but "if thou eatest, thou also shalt die."

But it is better to look at death in its moral and spiritual aspects, for thus it is commonly represented to us in the Scriptures. "Death by sin." Death is the shadow of sin. The great, dark, black substance, we call sin, comes between man and the bright light of God's countenance, and casts its shadow over man, and that shadow is death. In other words, it is the symptom of a deepseated disease. God applies his remedy to the cure of the disease, and to this dark substance, and the symptom is removed and the shadow disappears. They suggest :

II. The amazing power of the principle of life. It is a wonderful thing, that a human body with its nice and delicate organization should go on sleeping and waking, toiling and working without intercession and without rest for 90 or 100 years. No piece of mechanism constructed by man could sustain that constant, perpetual, uninterrupted action for all that time. But the individual man previous to his being broken up and laid aside has the amazing power of reproducing himself many times, and thus though the individual departs, they are left his representatives, new, fresh, vigorous, to carry on the work and machinery of the world. The power of man, then, even in this world is stronger than death. In spite of all that death does and all that man does to help him by drunkenness and vice and war, the species increases more and more, so that if death begins with a generation, and goes on cutting and mowing it down, when he has thus gone round the world and comes

back to where he started, there is a greater number alive than when he began.

Such is the great and wonderful power in this principle of life, and thus it is, that in a certain sense, death is continually being conquered in his own world. A prediction and a type of what awaits him when the words of scripture shall be fulfilled, that "the last enemy" shall be entirely destroyed and "mortality shall be swallowed up of life." They suggest :

III. That though there be this wonderful power in life, old age in general is not in itself desirable. Even when comparative wealth can procure whatever is needful, and make old age tolerable to the last, yet it often happens, that old age is only an additional affliction to the ordinary ills of life. Nature does a great deal independent of religion to bring men to be willing to die. For where there is no religion, and no "good hope through grace," and no trust in the Divine mercy the language and feeling of the man often is, "I would not live alway." The aged man stands alone, has outlived his friends, his capacity of forming new attachments-the world is behind him, a new generation has sprung up that knows him not. He is dependent, surrounded, and confined to a little circle of those immediately about him, just as he was in childhood. The aged cannot sympathize with new hearts and new persons, new modes of thought and feeling. How different in this aspect is man from God, who has fresh and young affection for every generation as it comes, and who can look. up to Him with the same cordiality and the same confidence as the first. They suggest :

IV. That death of a very aged person is uncommon. It is extraordinary. The general law is that men do not all die at one particular age. There is no fixed date up to which all men are to live and beyond which none can

survive. This would have been intolerable, inconsistent with the beneficent arrangements of a merciful God. He would not thus poison life. But the price we have to pay for this beneficent arrangement is, that we must be prepared to see death occur at all ages, under all circumstances, the most affecting, the most tender, the most tragical. There is nothing, therefore, in the time of a person's death to indicate character, or the condition of their future state. This uncertainty is therefore a benevolent darkness and blessed thing. Few, however, live over the allotted span of three or four score years. They are the exceptions to the general law. The text suggests:

V. That there are limits to human probation and Divine forbearance. Israel at this time had grown remiss, begun to pour contempt on God's word and temple, and God had somewhat shown his displeasure by the earth refusing her increase and the heavens their dew, and Zechariah appeals to them, that there must be a limit to disobedience of man and the exhortations of God; that the agents and the objects of the Divine mercy equally die. This rebellion on your part, the prophet seems to tell them, cannot go on forever. It is not God's way. "The prophets, do they live for ever? And your fathers, where are they?" Dead. Now remember, says Zechariah, you are living under the same law. Probation has its limits. Forbearance has its limits. Time and opportunity of repentance have their limits.

We should lay this to heart. We are living under the same law. We are now in the enjoyment of the means of grace and the offer of salvation. God graciously comes and speaks to us sending in the word and in the ministry message after message, prophet after prophet. But it must come to an end. It cannot go on for ever. Our children will rise up and look back into the dark,

dim past and say, they were "our fathers," "where are they?" We shall be gone. They suggest :

VI. The power and perpetuity of God's truth in contrast with the mortality of man. The prophets may die. and the fathers may go in like manner, but the utterances of a true prophet survive. A true thought is a Divine and immortal thing. What has come from the mind and heart of God lives, has power in it. "The prophets, do they live for ever? But my words and my statutes, &c.," all will come to pass exactly as the Lord had said. God's word has perpetual strength and youth and power. It never grows old and never dics.

THE PERISHING AND THE ENDURING.

REV. CANON II. P. LIDDON, D.D.

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God sholl stand for ever.-ISAIAH xl: 8.

ISAIAH in these sublime chapters eaches the very crown and flower of his prophetic work; the splendid climax of a great whole. The text is uttered by the second of two voices spoken to Isaiah as if out of the world of spirits.

The immediate and historical purpose of these words is, undoubtedly, to reassure the Jews of the captivity. They were in Babylon as Isaiah saw them-saw them across the centuries-far from their home, surrounded by the imposing fabric of the great empire, crushed into silent submission by its force, awed at times, or fascinated by its splendor. It seemed so much more solid, so much more lasting than the monarchy of David had been, they could not think that it would perish.

It was to men whose eyes were resting on this scene