"I have seen a thunder-storm from the top of a mountain, looking down upon it, and seen its lightnings play and heard its thunders roar, all so harmlessly amidst the glorious white clouds on which the benediction of the sun and the blessed day were falling.

"So will be can we doubt it?-the upper side, the heaven side of death to the true believer."

In his "Thanatos," Mr. J. W. Long pictures death as a king waiting at the gates to crown us in royal and resplendent life:

"Is death the end of all our pain and sorrow?
Or is it but the portal of the day?

Should we so dread the coming of its morrow?
Or think of it, as driving care away?

Is it a king, black-crowned with awful terror,
Or a physician, banishing our pain?
Are all our hopings but a night of error?
When we once sleep, shall we not wake again?

Is each ambition quieted forever,

When we are borne to our last resting-place?
Does Fate ring out an everlasting ‘never!'

Which blanches hope as white as the dead face?

Are all our lovings to be turned to ashes?
Does disappointment crucify each pain?
Are we but slaves receiving unjust lashes,
And bound together by a galley-chain?

Do mothers bid a farewell everlasting

To little children they have loved so long?
Is life but one long sacrifice and fasting?
And heaven but a mythologic song?

Do maidens build in vain a jeweled palace,

In which Love sits, supremely crowned as king?
Does Death force to their lips a poisoned chalice,

And laugh to scorn their life's whole offering?

Does manhood cease, with coffin round it closing?
Does the fair jewel die within its case?

Is what we see so quietly reposing,

All that is left of what was strength and grace?

Is what we read and call it revelation,

But a poor fable of the olden time?

And must we be forbidden consolation,

And forced to disbelieve those truths sublime?

Must every grave shut out the life eternal?
Is it the ending of each fond desire?
Or does it open into pastures vernal,

Warming our souls with glad fruition's fire?

Has father gone? or mother? husband? brother?
Sweet dimpled child, we loved, despite decree-
'Beside me, thou shalt love on earth no other
Like unto me.' Is this eternity?

No! Thanatos is King; since ages olden

He sits enthroned near the cold river's side.
Wide open gates lead to his city golden,

Where all our sorrows shall be deified.

Our good ambitions meet us at the river,
All clothed in substance, beautiful to see.
Each wish is granted by a royal Giver,

And peace there reigns as once in Galilee.

Hearts that still wished, when hope was almost dying,
For something better than this world could give,
Will quiet grow, and cease earth's endless sighing,
And know that now they can begin to live.

The waves, which once grew still upon the ocean,
Reach to the borders of the future land,
And He who tempered the wild wave's commotion
Will meet us with a loving brother's hand.

Yes! Thanatos is King; with royal greeting,
He seals our welcome with a father's kiss;
Gives back our loved ones; and the joyous meeting
Fulfills each hope. Can aught compare to this?

It is our home. This life is but a trial.

A crucial fire, our very souls to prove.

There, no request is met with a denial,

And there we realize that God is Love.""

The time of our death is uncertain, and it is a blessing to us that it is so. If we knew the day and hour and moment of our departure, like a murderer condemned to the gallows, we would count the minutes that remain to us, and perhaps shiver in horror to the last. Far better the present order in which "no man knoweth the coming of the Son of man." As Eben E. Rexford has gracefully sung

"When will it be?

Just at the nightfall, when all work is done,
And rest comes, following the vanished sun,

Bringing its peace to those who weary grew
With labor lasting all the long day through?
Will it be then?

Or will it be at midnight's solemn hour,
When earth seems sleeping like a folded flower?
Then will there come a knocking at the door,
And the soul start at sounds unheard before,
And listen for a voice in terror dumb,

The dreaded voice of death, that says: 'I come;
Art ready for the journey thou must take
Before the cock crows and thy friends awake?'

Or will it be at morning, when the sun
Rises on golden tasks anew begun?
Will I be standing at the plow when he
Whose face we dread so much shall come to me,
And say: 'Give o'er thy labor. Say good-bye
To these thy comrades? Will I shrink and cry:
'O, spare me yet a little while, I pray.
I am not ready. Wait till close of day!'
Ah, soul! not ready? Will the plea avail
Uttered by lips that terror has made pale?
No! He will say: 'Thou knewest, soon or late,
My feet would tarry at thy soul's closed gate.
Wast thou not bidden to be ready? Lo!
I come and find thee unprepared to go.
Thou askest time. Was time not given thee?
Too late regret, and all in vain thy plea!'

Rise, soul, and set thy house in order, lest
At any moment Death should be thy guest.
Be ready for the journey thou must go
At morn or midnight. If he finds thee so,
Brave with a faith in things thou canst not see,
What does it matter when he comes to thee?"

IMMORTALITY.

The hope of immortality is not peculiar to the Christian. All men appear to believe in the continued existence of the soul after death. Savages of the lowest order give expression to this idea.

"The Fijians not only believed in a future state, but were persuaded that, as they leave this life, so will they rise again. Hence it was an act of filial piety for children to put their parents to death before the decrepitude of old age had overtaken them. At the death of a chief, it is usual to send with him some of his women and slaves.

In these cases the wives generally die voluntarily, believing that thus only can they hope to go to heaven."

"The natives of Tiarrabou believed in the survival of the soul, and in two situations in different degrees of happiness somewhat analogous to our heaven and hell."

"Among the Karens the souls of the dead are supposed to assume different aspects, determined by their previous life. Sometimes they become divine spirits; sometimes they appear under the form of monstrous animals, as the punishment of murder and adultery. The good go to join their ancestors; the bad, on the contrary, wander about as restless phantoms."

"The Dyaks, of Borneo, believe that, as the smoke of the funeral pile of a good man rises, the soul ascends with it to the sky; and that the smoke from the pile of a wicked man descends, and his soul with it is borne down to the earth, and through it to the regions below."

The Damares indicate their notions of immortality by going to the grave of a deceased friend, laying down provisions, asking him to eat, drink, and be merry, and then beg him, in return, to aid them, and grant them herds of cattle and plenty of happiness. They also believe that the dead revisit the earth, though not in human form.

The Krumans conceive that the soul of the dead tarries for a while around the fire which is built at the occurrence of death, in order to warm and prepare itself to appreciate the new life into which it has been born. They therefore prepare food that it may eat, and sacrifice cattle in numbers according to their conception of its deserts, that it may take rank in the spirit-land in proportion to the number of cattle it leads thither.

Both naturalists and supernaturalists concede the universality of the belief in immortality. "The idea of a future life," says Pressensé, "is inseparable from the idea of God in the credo of the savage." Rialhé declares: "The belief is something inherent in our personality, which outlives our present existence, or continues it in another world; it seems to be universally diffused among mankind, and to be inborn in the human mind."

How can we account for this belief except it be founded on intuition? It classes itself with certain other fundamental doctrines of religion, such as the fall of man, the displeasure of God, and the necessity of prayer, as the universal heritage of the race, and in searching out the foundation of these beliefs, "we reach at last the inexplicable facts, that man is conscious of the existence of his own spirit,

and that he believes other men to possess like spirits, that there are beings of an order higher and more powerful than human, that he is accountable to some one or more higher powers for his actions, that it is needful to propitiate these superior beings, and that there is a future spiritual existence for him in the presence and society of higher spirits." For these rudimental religious ideas no reason can be assigned, except that "they are the result of the intuitive perception of men as the axioms of geometry, or the first principles and definitions of all science and knowledge."

THE CHINESE AND IMMORTALITY.

A writer in the North China Herald discusses the early Chinese notions of immortality. In the most ancient times ancestral worship was maintained on the ground that the souls of the dead exist after this life. The present is a part only of human existence, and men continue to be after death what they have become before it. Hence the honors accorded to men of rank in their life-time were continued to them after their death. In the earliest utterances of Chinese national thought on this subject, we find that duality which has remained the prominent feature in Chinese thinking ever since. The present life is light; the future is darkness. What the shadow is to the substance, the soul is to the body; what vapor is to water, breath is to man. By the process of cooling, steam may again become water, and the transformations of animals teach us that beings inferior to man may live after death. In the course of ages, and in the vicissitudes of religious ideas, men came to believe more definitely in the possibility of communications with supernatural beings. In the twelfth century before the Christian era it was a distinct belief that the thoughts of the sages were to them a revelation from above. The "Book of Odes" frequently uses the expression, "God spoke to them," and one sage is represented after death "moving up and down in the presence of God in heaven." A few centuries subsequently we find, for the first time, great men transferred in the popular imagination to the sky, it being believed that their souls took up their abode in certain constellations. The pure is heavenly and the gross earthly, and therefore that which is purest on earth ascends to the regions of the The stork became the animal which the immortals preferred to ride above all others. The idea of plants which confer immunity from death soon sprang up. The fungus known as Polyporus lucidus was taken to be the most efficacious of all plants in guarding man from death, and three thousand ounces of silver have been asked for a

stars.