Let us look up lovingly. Love is stronger than all ills, and will crowd itself even through death. Love seeks and finds its object-dies, and yet dies not, in the pursuit. Under its guidance, we shall find the objects of our affections; for it knows the homeward way. Come, ye living! let us sit together under the moaning but ever-green cypress, and commune with the departed. Let us drive from our hearts Cæsar's money-changers, and escape for a moment from the world's benumbing rattle. Let us draw softly down into the quiet border-land along the valley of the shadow of death. We will listen intently. The softest notes that float to our ears across the almost breathless solitude, shall tell us hopeful tales of a better land, and of those who dwell in it. We will cry earnestly into the hollow silence which so holds the lip of death's Lethean Jordan, as to allow it scarce a whisper of sorrow or joy. The earnestness of our voice will bring back tidings to the ear of faith. We will seek them, our treasures-eternal treasures-the Sainted Dead.

Will we see them again?-know them again?-love them again?—the Sainted Dead. This would we know? We will institute, humbly but earnestly, our questionings.

As "the deepest lore is the most universal," we will pass along the cool sequestered vale of common life, and listen to the deep longings and hopes of those who live and love

"In the low huts of them that toil and groan."

We will ask the mysterious prophetic sighings that come to us out of the Pagan gloom. We will seek for dawnings of hope in the Jewish twilight. We will look for clearer light in the Gospel dawn-He who brought immortality to light will teach us. We will draw nigh to the apostles

when they speak words of comfort to bereaved hearts -some fragments that prove the existence of a loaf shall be ours. The early Christians, whose hearts were still warm from the words of inspired lips, shall make us wise by holy tradition. The wise of after ages, whose minds were clearest because their hearts were purest, shall utter to us right things on this interesting subject. We will sit at the feet of the poets, who are "the interpreters of the human heart-the expounders of its mysteries," and who have an utterance given them that is denied to others; they will not send us empty away.

In all these researches, we cannot fail to gather some rays of sacred wisdom, to shine away the sorrow of bereaved hearts, and much of the gloom of death. Voices, though feeble, and unheard by the dull ear of worldlings, yet comforting as sweet songs of promise, shall answer to our questionings. They will whisper soothingly to us: You shall find them-know them-love them-your fadeless treasures-the Sainted Dead.

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Is your heart sad? Do your lips tremble? Are your eyes wet? Then read on in the next chapter. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted."

CHAPTER II.

The Beavenly Recognition among Pagans.

Who would not part with a great deal to purchase a meeting with Orpheus, Hesiod, Homer? If it be true that this is to be the consequence of death, I would even be glad to die often. What pleasure would it give to live with Palemedes and others, who suffered unjustly, and to compare my fate with theirs? What an inconceivable happiness will it be to converse, in another world, with Sisyphus, Ulysses, &c., especially as those who inhabit that world shall die no more.-SOCRATES. Apol. apud Plat.

The ancient Germans hoped to meet their friends again, beyond death, in a beautiful and peaceful valley.-ERNST.

THE knowledge of a future life has always been common among Pagan tribes and nations. That they should live after death was believed among them from the earliest time, and has been a cherished doctrine with them in all ages, and in all lands. No one among them, however, professed to have deduced the doctrine of the soul's immortality from his own reasonings; neither did any one ever pretend to have received it by direct revelation from spiritual beings. They always speak of it as a very ancient doctrine, found among those golden glimmerings of sacred tradition which appear among all nations, in the grey twilight of their early history, far back as knowledge extends. This is not strange. Life is sweet, and it is a pleasing

hope to live after death. The knowledge of an eternal life, no doubt, came to them by some stray rays of divine revelation that found their way out from the tents of Israel into the surrounding gloom of Pagan darkness. These were eagerly caught, warmly cherished, and long retained, because they served in a great measure to interpret the deep and mysterious wants and longings of their hearts. No one can look into the history, literature, poetry, and religion of any Pagan nation, at any period of the world, without being moved to pity and sympathy at the plaintive expression of their earnest hopes and fears in reference to another life.

What has now been said of their belief in another life itself, is equally true in reference to their belief in the mutual recognition of each other in that life, and the renewal and perpetuation of their earthly friendships and affections. It is necessary, in a full discussion of this subject, to take notice of this, not so much to ascertain what is positively true that will be attended to in the proper place-as to ascertain what the heart, when left to its own longings, desires to be true. These deep, earnest voices and whispers of the human heart, are always prophetic. This cry of want is to be listened to, in order to find out the remedy needed. What God has provided for the saved, will certainly correspond with the wants of the lost before they are saved. These Pagan ideas are voices in the wilderness, like that of John the Baptist, which do not contradict the teachings of Him who is to come, but really and truly proclaim what is to come. The "earnest expectation of the creature" will not be disappointed. It is true, in a deep and comprehensive sense, that "hope maketh not ashamed.” Hope presupposes a sense of want; hope is the reaching

forth of the heart after that which will satisfy its wants. What these wants by an inward necessity reach after, must and does exist. This sense of want exists for the very reason that thereby their hearts may be urged on to seek that which will satisfy them. In this sense we are "saved by hope." This sense of want teaches us that what will satisfy them exists, though it be out of sight; and hence it is that the object of hope must, in the nature of things, be unseen. "Hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”

We introduce this chapter on the doctrine of future recognition among Pagans, not only to exhibit the deep desire they manifested that it might be true, and thus to show that a want exists in the human spirit which calls for it; but also to preserve, through the whole discussion, the unbroken thread of its history. It must be granted, by all who earnestly think, that no doctrine can be correctly and clearly treated, or rightly understood and appreciated, except in the light and connection of its past history. Any event or doctrine suddenly sprung upon us, rather confounds than instructs us. Our intellectual and moral nature always starts with a kind of suspicious surprise at that which is new. Only that which is light and frivolous at once falls in with the latest; the deep and thoughtful regards the past. A doctrine, like a prophet, has not the same honour, at the time when it arises, which it has afterwards; age is necessary to give it the authority of wisdom. We cannot possibly so well know an individual who is suddenly introduced to us in mature age, even though his character be delineated to us, as we do know the same person, if we have known him ourselves in all his acts from