This " murmur of the soul" is not simply a desire for eternal earthly fame. No doubt there is a profound satisfaction in the thought that the good we do will live after us. We may rejoice also at the benefit the world derives to-day from the good deeds of those who lived yesterday, and are now dead. But, as a secular paper (the New York Sun) has said: "Set up this sort of immortality as a substitute for the personal immortality which Christianity promises, to praise it as a nobler object of aspiration, to try to appease the longing of the human heart with the prospect it offers, is all in vain. Conscious life after death is the immortality which man longed for in ages past, longs for to-day, and will always long for. Science may doubt, and philosophy deny, but the hope of such an immortality will be as eternal as the foundations of the earth."

Even the wonderful old philosopher of Greece came very near our revealed doctrine of the soul and its immortal life. Here is a passage most striking: "If the soul be immortal, then does she stand in need of care, not only during this period which we call life, but for all time; and we may well consider that there is terrible danger in neglecting her. If death were indeed an escape from all things, then were it a great gain to the wicked, for it would be a release from the body and from their own sin, and from the soul at the same time; but now, as the soul proves to be immortal, there is no other escape from evils to come, nor any other safety, but in attaining to the highest virtue and wisdom." This passage, and some following it, from the Phœdo are examples of the search of the intellect of men for the truth. Shall we say unassisted intellect? Was not Socrates a seeker after God, and do not the loftiness of his teaching, and the practical illustration in his submission to the law because it represented the highest earthly power, prove the aid of that Spirit whose fullness we possess in Christ?

Hear Cicero also: "O glorious day! when I shall depart to that divine company and assemblage of spirits, and quit this troubled and polluted scene. For I shall go not only to those great men of whom I have spoken before, but also to my friend Cato, than whom never was better man born, nor more distinguished for pious affection; whose body was buried by me, whereas, on the contrary, it was fitting that mine should be buried by him. But his soul not deserting me, but often looking back, no doubt departed to those regions whither it saw that I myself was destined to come; which, though a distress to me, I seemed patiently to endure; not that I bore it with indifference, but I comforted myself with the recollection that the separation

and distance between us would not continue long." This clearly expressed hope of Cicero was not unlike that hope which is the anchor of the Christian soul. Well may we inquire with Addison:

"Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,

This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
"T is the divinity that stirs within us:

"T is heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.

The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,

The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds."

Not only has man a hope of immortality, but he can not persuade himself that that hope is ill-founded. Note the question of S. W. Francis, M. D.: "Can it be possible that man, a human form, to whom homage is paid both by animal and vegetable; the focus of ingenuity; the wonderful exposition of cause and effect; the living poem of perfect measure; the mechanical wonder of the world,-was born and created to grow; and, having done his best to injure or benefit mankind, he, a perfect score in the plan of creation, shall cease to exist when the body sinks; and the soul stained with sin shall meet with no just punishment, when laws against sin govern this world? Or, if he has raised the lowly, forgiven the erring, and relieved the suffering and needy relative, is he to be blotted out, even as a worm is trodden down, and reap the benefit of no approving conscience?"

Consider the reflection of Lord-Chancellor Erskine: "When I reflect that God has given to inferior animals no instincts or faculties that are not immediately subservient to the ends and purposes of their beings, I can not but conclude that the reason and faculties of man were bestowed upon the same principle, and are connected with his superior nature. When I find him, therefore, endowed with powers to carry, as it were, the line and rule to the most distant worlds, I consider it as conclusive evidence of a future and more exalted destination, because I can not believe that the Creator of the universe would depart from all the analogies of the lower creation in the for

mation of his highest creature, by gifting him with a capacity not only utterly useless, but destructive of his contentment and happiness, if his existence were to terminate in the grave."

"To him who believes, or tries to believe, that death ends all, the greatest human achievement, or possibility of achievement, must be mean and pitiable, unworthy the struggle to secure it. But to him who believes that the character laid here is the foundation of a being as eternal as God himself, the smallest stone laid therein, the least act, becomes fraught with importance, and all life is made an inspiration to go up higher."

"Alas for him who never sees

The stars shine through his cypress trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day

Across the mournful marbles play!

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,

That life is ever lord of death,

And love can never lose its own!"

(J. G. Whittier.)

IMMORTALITY INDICATED BY EXPERIENCE.

Were it possible to overwhelming majority All might not wish to

The desire for immortality is universal. secure a popular vote upon the subject, an would be found to favor endless existence. live forever in this world, and some, because of trouble and afflictions, might not care to live forever anywhere, unless they could be freed from the things which make existence a burden to them; but the masses would say, Yes, let us live on and live ever. We desire not to die. Even this world is good enough for us, if sickness and pain and death be taken away. We vote for continued life.

Now, it is a fair inference from what we know of God's ways that he will gratify a wish so natural and universal. The desire for immortality is divinely implanted in the human breast. It is constitutional. It inheres in our natures. It is not acquired by education. It is not a recent, spontaneous production, but has always been. The literature of every nation shows a longing for eternal life. None wish to die, to lie down in the cold and noisome grave, to become the food of worms and be forgotten. Consider what men do to acquire an earthly immortality. They know they can not dwell on earth forever, and so they toil and struggle to perpetuate their fame. Old age does not dampen their ardor. To life's latest hour they seek to establish a name that will live forever. Even those who affect not to believe in

the immortality of the soul, believe in making the life history and influence immortal, or as nearly so as they can be. George Eliot groaned after this realization:

"O, may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence; live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude; in scorn

For miserable aims that end with self;

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:

To make undying music in the world,

Breathing as beauteous order that controls

With growing sway the growing life of man."

Every natural desire has provision for its gratification. If we hunger, we find food; if we thirst, there is water to drink. The love of the heart finds objects around which it may entwine. Even laudable ambition may be gratified. And so with the desire for immortality. The very existence of such a desire is proof that we are immortal.

"It must be so-Plato, thou reasonest well!

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?

'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;

'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter
And intimates Eternity to man."

The very dread of death itself, in the fair equation of existence, demands a satisfactory antidote. For all losses, save the loss of life, there are compensations. If we lose our property, we may regain it by industry and economy; if we lose our health, it is possible to build it up; but if we lose our life, unless immortality be true, there is no chance for reparation. Immortality is the only possible antidote for death, and he who is just in all his ways has certainly provided it for man. The dead we have laid away are not dead, but only asleep. Our loved ones for whom we mourn are living on. They have escaped the trials and sorrows of this present world, and await our coming in the land of life. They desired a better country than this, that is, a

heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city. We feel that this is so. It is inconceivable that beings created as we are, with powers capable of unlimited progression, should be blotted out of existence. Man is too valuable a specimen of creation to perish in a day. Look at the great intellects that have arisen like veritable suns, and shone upon the world. Has their life been quenched? Are Moses and Isaiah, and Paul and Luther, and Sir Isaac Newton, absolutely extinct? Was the transfiguration in which Moses and Elias appeared a delusion and lie? None of us think so. Doubt and wonder at times as we may, the old belief comes back in spite of us that the dead are not dead, but only housed in the realm of spirits. In God's good time they shall all come forth and reclaim their glorified companion bodies in the bonds of endless being. We shall join them. Like them we shall live, like them we shall die, and like them we shall know what it is to be thrown upon the consciousness of pure spirit being. This is destiny. Now we know in part, but then shall we know even also as we are known. As in our pre-natal life we had no idea or consciousness of what post-natal life would be, so in the earthly sphere we have no knowledge of the heavenly. "We lie here, as it were, in our nests, unfledged and weak, guessing dimly at the future before us, and scarcely willing to believe in the reality of the existence we now enjoy;" but that existence is ours, and shall have no end. A little time will unfold it, and it shall then appear to us in all the beauty and power of its eternal grandeur.

LIFE'S VERY WRETCHEDNESS DEMANDS IMMORTALITY.

The sufferings of life, arising from the transgressions of moral laws, can not be explained except upon the hypothesis of a future life. I have heard, says a celebrated Oxford professor, of some French workingmen who told a clergyman that there was no God, or that if there were, they only wished they could catch the author of so much misery and kill him. And they were right, if this world be the only one. If there be no future life, there is no moral iniquity so foul, no injustice so crying, as the world in which we live. is no crime so horrible but that we can plead Creator of this world, if there be One, for it. of mankind should be living in poverty and filth and wretchedness, slaving hard for their daily toil, scarcely knowing what it is to have a gleam of brightness across their days, while the few should be lapped in luxury, steeped to the lips in enjoyment, "faring sumptuously

In this case, there the example of the That the great mass