The thunder-peal the deed will wake,
Will make his craven spirit quake;

And a voice from people, peer, and throne,
Will ring in his ears, Atone, Atone!"

If the Bible be the spiritual home of the believer-if it minister efficiently to the necessities of his entire man-if witnesses from opposing points have testified in its favour-if from the Ultima Thule of scepticism Theodore Parker is eloquent in its praise-if from the torrid zone of Popery Father Newman declares that "it lives in the soul with a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells which the convert hardly knows how he can forego; and all that there is about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible"-if it has come down to us hallowed with the memories of eld, and wet with the last tearful blessing of parents passed into the skies-if it has sustained our own spirits in extremest trouble, made our life-work easy to us, beguiled the toil of this world, and inspired the hope of the world that is to come, -what wonder that the jealous Christianity of the land, roused by the threatened desecration, should speak in tones of power, and

should say to the mistaken men who would tamper with it, "Hands off there! proud intruders, let that Bible alone!"

And you, oh ye highly-privileged possessors and guardians of the truth! guard well your sacred trust-clasp it as your choicest treasure-lift it high in your temples-hide it deep in your hearts; it is "the word of the Lord, and that word endureth for ever."

A Voice from Westminster Abbey.

If Macaulay had an ambition dearer than the rest, it was that he might lie "in that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried;" and the walls of the great Abbey do enclose him "in their tender and solemn gloom." Not in ostentatious state, nor with the pomp of sorrow, but with hearty and mourning affection, did rank and talent, and office and authority, assemble to lay him in the grave. The pall was over the city on that drear January morning, and the cold, raw wind wailed mournfully, as if sighing forth the requiem of the great spirit that was gone; and amid sad

dened friends-some who had shared the sports of his childhood, some who had fought with him the battles of political life—amid warm admirers and generous foes, while the aisles rang with the cadences of solemn music, and here and there were sobs and pants of sorrow, they bore him to that quiet restingplace, where he "waits the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." Not far from the place of his sepulture are the tablets of Gay, and Rowe, and Thomson, and Garrick, and Goldsmith; on his right sleeps Isaac Barrow, the ornament of his own Trinity College; on his left, no clamour breaks the slumber of Samuel Johnson; from a pedestal at the head of the grave, serene and thoughtful, Addison looks down; the coffin which was said to have been exposed at the time of the funeral probably held all that was mortal of Richard Brinsley Sheridan; Campbell gazes pensively across the transept, as if he felt that the pleasures of hope were gone; while from opposite sides, Shakspeare, the remembrancer of mortality, reminds us from his open scroll that the "great globe itself, and all that it inhabit, shall dissolve, and, like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not

a wreck behind ;" and Handel, comforting us in our night of weeping by the glad hope of immortality, seems to listen while they chant forth his own magnificent hymn, "His body is buried in peace, but his name liveth for evermore." There are strange thoughts and lasting lessons to be gathered in this old Abbey, and by the side of this latest grave. From royal sarcophagus and carven shrine; from the rustling of those fading banners, which tell of the knights of the former time; yonder where the Chathams and Mansfields repose; here where the orators and poets lie, comes there not a voice to us of our frailty, borne into our hearts by the brotherhood of dust upon which our footsteps tread? How solemn the warning! Oh for grace to learn it!

"Earth's highest glory ends in-'Here he lies!'

And dust to dust' concludes her noblest song."

And shall they rise, all these? Will there be a trumpet-blast so shrill that none of them may refuse to hear it, and the soul, re-entering its shrine of eminent or common clay, pass upward to the judgment? "Many and mighty, but all hushed," shall they submit with us to the arbitrations of the last assize?

And in that world, is it true that gold is not the currency, and that rank is not hereditary, and that there is only one name that is honoured? Then, if this is the end of all men, let the living lay it to heart. Solemn and thoughtful, let us search for an assured refuge; childlike and earnest, let us confide in the one accepted Name; let us realise the tender and infinite nearness of God our Father, through Jesus our Surety and our Friend; and in hope of a joyful resurrection for ourselves, and for the marvellous Englishman we mourn, let us sing his dirge in the words of the truest poet of our time :—

"All is over and done:

Render thanks to the Giver !

England, for thy son.

Let the bell be toll'd.

Render thanks to the Giver.

And render him to the mould.

Let the bell be toll'd,

And the sound of the sorrowing anthem roll'd,

And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd.
To such a name for ages long

To such a name

Preserve a broad approach of fame,

And ever-ringing avenues of song.

*Lecture on Macaulay.