and tears; the groups of stricken spirits kneeling by lonely hearths, and silent graves. There do we see the traces of an infinity of love, plain and bright. We hear the word of blessing for the mourning, and read the bright witnesses of experience, comfirming the blessed teaching. And ah, if the darkest things seem especial tokens of mercy, what dazzling manifestation of love shall shine from all beside, when their glory shall be revealed? If here, we see so much of grace in the trial and the gloom, what shall we say in our more perfect right? Thou child of heaven, enfolded ever in a Providence so beneficent, what canst thou do forever but sweetly trust?

The Cloud of Witnesses.

HEBREWS 12: 1. "A Cloud of Witnesses."

THE Apostle applies this expression to the faithful who had lived before his day. He represents them as a great cloud of sympathizing witnesses, compassing the believers about, while they were running their own appointed race. And he seems to speak, as if the memory of such departures, and the conciousness of such an encouraging presence, must become a mighty impulse to a kindred fidelity.

"A cloud of witnesses." No thoughtful person can fail to perceive in his observation, if not by his experience, how rapidly we are becoming connected with the dead closely as with the living, in the continual departures from the circles of society and friendship. Singly they take their flight; parent, child, friend, so gradually they may go, that possibly we do not realize at first how rapidly they pass away. at length, where is that once unbroken company of friends or kindred; suddenly we see the number of the departed may be great, as of those remaining. Even in youth that experience begins to be known, and as years advance, especially as age approaches, the witnesses become as a cloud

But when we ask

in their number. It is not a single, familiar household voice alone, once speaking to our hearts on earth, which now only seems to speak from the skies. A throng is already there, and their silent, but united testimony and invitation, may have a power to the spirit of faith at occasional hours, almost as great as any voice of love still saluting our ear in the dwellings of the world.

It is a sure, and yet a blessed process, the sure course of years is carrying onward. It is blessed, though it may only be advanced amidst many tears of bereavement and pains of separations, keen as any pang of dissolution itself. For it is a glorious testimony these rapidly increasing companies of the loved in the spiritual world, are bearing to the thoughtful soul. Meditate a moment concerning those testimonies. In the first place, the unseen world becomes more distinct every hour, as the cherished and the loved pass into its invisible mansions. It is delightful indeed to observe, how direct is the tendency of the manifold separations of life, rightly regarded, to build up an undying faith. The spiritual world is a land of shadows no more, when a cherished friend, a heart we have known, has gone to dwell there, and in proportion as the witnesses become as a cloud by their increase, will it appear as a great reality to the soul. It cannot be only a shadow then. I know its inhabitants. Familiar voices are speaking there. Well known feet are

busy in its blessed ministries. Hearts, whose deeper life hath been manifest to our eyes, are throbbing there unchanged, except in the change that brightens earthly grace into heavenly glory. The spiritual world we repeat, will be a shadow no more, as the company of the departed increases. For that world is not some scene of outward glory, never imaged even to earthly eyes. It consists in the thoughts, the hopes, the life of its redeemed hearts. And when this is known by previous, though now severed ties, the divine reality is partially unveiled. Ah! I imagine not now the full brightness or beauty of that concentration of spiritual life and light around the throne. Yet bright rays entering therein have beamed across our pathway here. The nature of that glory we know, though its fullness heart hath not conceived. No; it is not the words of instruction only, even if they be the beautiful words upon the Saviour's lips, that may impart this clear unfading faith. The departure of the loved makes the hope and the life of the resurrection plain. Is it not an infinitely gracious providence which causes the defeat of mortal hopes, to be the process to unfold an immortal assurance? Is it not mercy to make each bereavement remove another film from our blinded and faithless eyes? The conquests of death quicken the faith which takes away their sting. The victories of the grave destroy its triumphs. What can they do

except to increase the cloud of witnesses who compass us about?

Another testimony still, these encompassing witnesses must surely bear. They not only make the spiritual world a reality to our thought, but they invest it with new and enduring charms. It becomes beautiful to the heart, as it becomes clearer to the mind. Who are gathering there as this bereaving providence goes onward? They are not unknown beings, who might fail to attract our affections. Most familiar friends, these objects of household tenderness, parents, children, all the loved are going. And as their presence when still on earth gave to life its dearest joy, so now to the believing mind, their presence in the spiritual world, will invest the state beyond the tomb with the same attraction, and in tones still dear to the heart they seem to say, "come up hither, to dwell again with us." If home be to dwell with those to whom the heart is clinging, how surely, and how rapidly are homes building for us there! The cloud of witnesses is gathering. We are not to be torn away from present friends, to be transferred to a land of strangers, wandering like exiles from our native soil. In this gracious Providence, we are only passing from home below, to homes above; to a home where those yet left behind will soon come to dwell. And as the child born into present life, is received into the arms of deepest love waiting to