one after another, her strength failing, her grief increasing, and her solitude becoming more dreary with every loss. She must have shared the common lot of all the sons and daughters of Adam-sickness, pain and sorrow, in forms and intensity which he cannot know. From all these things she has escaped. Her last pang is felt, her last tear is shed; her fears quelled, her brightest hopes are realized. Her sighs are changed to songs, and her moans to hallelujaks! From the society ́of sinful mortals, she is transferred to the society of sinless immortals. Abram and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses and Aaron, and all the patriarchs and prophets of old-Stephen and Paul, and all the just made perfect, who went before her, are now her companions, and shall forever be. And yet her joys are not half told, and no human tongue can tell them. Paul, with but a glimpse of them from earth, could not describe them. She is an angel of heaven, we know; and wonderful have been the things done by angels on this earth. The guardian angel she may be of her husband and his children. She beckons them to her abode of bliss, and gives it an additional charm. Can stronger consolations to grief be conceived of, than these? I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me Write, blessed are the deal that die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow them. Now, all these consolations are yours, ye grief-stricken, loving and loved ones, of our departed sister. These are the consolations of those who knew her, and knew her but to love her. Could the sympathy of friends alleviate your grief, you would hardly know its poignancy. Go, search not the places which she consecrated by her presence, or the things which she hallowed by her touch, to open afresh the fountains of your tears; but look to her in her new abode, the house of many mansions, prepared for her by him who died that she might live. See her, with what she now holds in her hands-palms of victory, that shall never fade. See her, in the chorus of the blessed, singing Hallelujah: Salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God. Go, represent her as well as you can, in ministering to those little ones, who are the greatest losers by her death. All tears are wiped away from her eyes: wipe away all tears from yours; at least as soon as you can, and strive not to recall them. I have spoken with great confidence of the beatified state of our departed sister; because I have not a shadow of doubt of it. After an intimacy with her of more than two years, part of which time I spent under her own roof, I never discovered the first blemish in her character. I very much question whether any one else ever did, after she became a member of the Church of Christ. As a daughter, she was affectionate, obedient and kind. As a wife, she was all that a pious husband could desire, and all that God required her to be. As a mother, she was gentle but firm-leading on her little ones to heaven, more by the restraints of love than authority. She must have been pre-eminently blessed in the native disposition of her children, or herself a model of parental government; for they are mostly of that age which falls almost exclusively under maternal care, and no mother can boast of a lovelier group. As a mistress, she was gentle and kind; attentive to the wants and indulgent to the frailties of her servants. As a neighbor, she abounded in good offices; always bestowed in the most endearing way. As a Christian, she was blameless in her walk and conversation. She was peculiarly attached to the house of God and its services, as this congregation well know. I would, says Paul, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array. But (which becometh a woman professing godliness) with good works. Teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the Word of God be not blasphemed. These are rules which call for constant care and circumspection, and no little firmness in this day and genera tion; but our departed sister, as you all know, obeyed them to the letter. I speak confidently of her transit to a brighter world than this. May her mantle fall upon the daughters of Oxford! Sore is her loss to her family, her church, and her neighborhood; but our loss is her gain; and let us submit to the sad dispensation with meekness and humility. It is an inscrutable providence; but it is the Lord's doing, and shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right? Let us redouble our energies to dispensation to the soul's good of all present, meet her in heaven; and may God sanctify the so that we may shout with her the praises of redeeming love in the seraph world. For The Casket." DEATH. And though Nature shrinks appalled, reluctant, When she surveys the darkness of the tomb: Though we have loved How truly art thou called the King of Terrors ! Thy conquests are not checked by swelling seas A barrier to human pride, and say To man's ambition- "Thus far shalt thou come; And bring whole navies captive to thy feet. To thy wide sway, the learned and the rude, A solemn awe always attends thy steps. Even when we see an aged man, whose days We feel that 'tis a serious thing to die. And cherished daintily our prison house, And cannot give it up as food for worms To close our eyes on these, and venture down With no companionship but that of worms, The grim attendants waiting on his train, Ah! who can realize the solemn scene, Is ushered to the presence of its God? Who cannot look on sin with but abhorrence! I look beyond the darkness of the grave O, love divine! Unutterable grace! Ascending high, and showed our feet the way. For "The Casket." THE BITTER CUP. Father, I take the bitter cup, Chasten me in thy love; I know that anguish leads the soul I know we have a truer faith, An inward searching of the soul, Father, I take the bitter cup, Resign me to thy will, Breathe in my spirit holier thoughts, To know thee and be still. Teach me, that tho' each friend shall die. If Jesus guides to life through death, Father, I take the bitter cup, Nought else can lead to heavenThe spirit seeks for rest on earth, Till every hope is riven. I take the cup, O Holy One, I bend an humble knee, And bless the Father for each grief der care. With anxious solicitude the Shepherd King sat upon the hills of Bethlehem, and tended his father's flocks-guarding them from beasts of prey, gently leading them by still waters and in green pastures. The blessed Saviour spoke much in parables, but he never used fgures simply for their rhetoric. He always concealed a deep meaning beneath, and his argument is always from the less to the greater. To know, therefore, the pastor's full duty, is to know and surpass all the incessant duties of Judea's shepherds; for surely, if the man who guards the senseless herd is solicitous for their welfare, much more should he be so who has under his charge immortal souls. It is one thing for a clergyman to sit in his study from week to week, pore over musty volumes, come to the pulpit and speak what he has gathered since the last Sabbath, and return thither, as would a monk to his cell, without the least intercourse with the individuals of his charge; and it is a far different thing to be, like the Son of God, continually going about doing good, spreading joy and peace around him, clothing the naked and feeding the starving, cheering the broken-hearted, healing the wounded spirit and speaking confidence to the trembling soul. Who can tell the consolation and A PREACHER AND A PASTOR. joy that the man of God can pour into the Ir is possible for a man to be a preacher of the Gospel, a profound theologian, a brilliant scholar, and an eloquent speaker, and yet fall far short of the duties which the Divine Master requires of the shepherds of his flock. He may have a mind highly polished and symmetrical; his intellect may be profound; he may have at command all the varied stores of science and literature, of the sacred lore of the church, and the writings of the Christian fathers; his soul may even kindle from the flames that purified and fitted for ascension the souls of Christianity's martyrs, and yet the great Shepherd may have "somewhat" to say “against him." When the Redeemer was about to leave his infant church on earth, he compared it to a sheep-fold, and his ministers to shepherds. Every one that is acquainted with the character and duties of an Eastern shepherd, knows well that they not only gathered their flocks into pastures, and kept over them a general supervision, but guarded each, by day and by night, with the most ten bereaved heart of the desolate widow and lone orphan! When the poor and neglected sinner has run long upon the mountains of sin, and fed upon the husks of life; when his soul is sick of vanity, and he would feign return to his father's house, how would the sight of the good man, proffering to lead him thither, cheer his soul! When clouds and darkness ale hanging around the wandering saint, and he fears to say "Abba Father," how like the balm of Gilead are the words of the friendly pastor, bidding him look up and know that it is his father's hand that guides the stroke. What evidence can a congregation have that their pastor is much interested in their welfare, when he gives them no evidence of it by discharging the duties of a pastor? True, it has been, and is still argued, after the old proverb, that "familiarity breeds contempt." To overthrow this, it is only necessary to appeal to each one's experience. Be assured that the man, who shows himself solicitous for my welfare without the pulpit, will be much more likely to secure my earn place of springs and palms, and there they "Ah!" said the disciple-"I see the strangest thing! The palm trees are inverted, and their roots are in heaven, and the stream is pouring out of the hollow of God's hand." est attention when in it. The man who min- of the Arabs, and the camels even are faintgles freely with his people at home, identi-ing; and I see an old Arab prostrate himself fying himself with their interests, and gaining upon the hot sand, and curse Allah in his rage their confidence by his pious and holy walk, of thirst. It is awful to see!” will surely not lose it when speaking to them "Look again," said the sage. from the pulpit of their eternal interests. "Now the camels are snuffing a moist wind, Such a pastor, the aged will cherish and sup-newly blowing. They revive, and hasten on port, the youth will respect and obey; to him till they bring the perishing Bedouin to a the children will run, and not from him, and they will love such a pastor; a congregation will vie in laboring to support him, and will retain him while life lasts, and long to meet him above. In short, it is absolutely necessary for a pastor to visit his people and hold intercourse with them; otherwise, how can he know their wants. As well may the physician sit in his office and distribute medicines to a community, without visiting a sick room -for one is but the physician of the body, the other of the soul. To those preachers who do not discharge the duties of a pastor, it may be that Ezekiel's reproof will be applied -“The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost: my sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill; yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and none did search or seek after them. Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the Word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God: Behold I am against the shepherds; and I will require my flock at their hands, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock." Wo unto the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock? Denmark, Tenn. AN ORIENTAL MYTH. "Yes, my son," said the sage, "He saved their lives even while they cursed him. Remember, our trees of blessing are all rooted in heaven, though it seem not so to us; and our rivulets of comfort, though they reach our lips through the golden goblet of one friend, or the poor gourd of another—and we thank these friends as the givers — do they not all flow from the hollow of his hand? "Now, therefore, our God, we thunk thee, and praise thy glorious name!” DID THE SUN AND MOON STAND PROFESSOR O. M. MITCHELL, in regard to this question, expresses himself substantially as follows, in a recent lecture: — "It is recorded that Joshua commanded the sun and moon to stand still, and they did so. To accomplish this, the earth must have stopped in its axis, and the moon in her orbit. These luminaries were the gods of the people opposed to the Israelites, and I see no reason why they might not have been stopped in their motions by the Almighty with as much ease as he originated and set them in motion. Professor Mitchell illustrated this by the power of a maker of a clock to keep it moving, or to suspend its action. The question is, was there more to be accomplished by this miracle than there could have been without it? He was fully ready to believe in the probability, and he cared not how it was done "I see strange things," said the disciple, whether by the sudden pressure of an attractafter he had gazed steadfastly awhile. "Iing body, or apparently by refraction of light, see a caravan just perishing with thirst, and or by actual arrest of the earth in its rotation the water is all gone from the water-bottles upon its axis; but either case requires the di AN Arabian sageso says an Oriental myth-wishing to explain that all things are not as they seem, bade his disciple go to a fountain that gushed out of the sand by his tent-side, and dip up a calabash of its water, and told him to sit down and look intently into it, and tell what he saw. rect interposition of some power above all natural laws. Professor Mitchell said that the motion of the earth on its axis could never have been arrested, and the stability of the universe never sustained, without a direct interposition of the power of the Creator in the suspension of the laws of gravitation and attraction. Now, in theory, this was the same thing; but, in order to do it, he must be possessed of Almighty power. There was no reason in attempting to account for such an occurrence by any known laws; if it took place (and that it did, we have the evidence of this Book), it was the work of the Almighty, done expressly to display a miracle of power to the hosts of the Israelites and their enemies, and not incidentally to be noticed or overlooked, as the attention of man might happen to be directed at the time." We understood the position of Professor Mitchell to be, distinctly, that he regarded this phenomenon as a real miracle, a positive suspension of the ordinary laws of matter by the special interposition of God. He did not speak doubtfully on the subject, nor did he press his convictions upon his hearers as infallible. He had been asked to speak upon that particular point, and he gave such views as had been settled upon his mind as the only solution of the question to which he had come. The conclusions were entirely his own, and to him entirely satisfactory. MUSIC. " BY REV. HENRY GILES. It befits the solemn often seek an utterance yet nearer to the in finite; and such they find in music. You cannot delineate a feeling—at most, you can by intonation directly give the feeling. Thus related to the unseen soul, music is a voice for faith, which is itself the realization of things not seen. And awaiting as the soul is amidst troubles and toils, looking upward from the earth, and onward out of time, for a better world or a purer life, in its believing and glad expectancy, music is the voice of its hope. In the depression and despondency of conviction; in the struggles of repentance in the worldless calm of internal peace, music answers to the mood, and soothingly breaks the dumbness of the heart. For every charity that can sanctify and bless humanity, music has its sacred measures; and well does goodness merit the richest harmony of sound, that is itself the richest harmony of heaven. Sorrow, also, has its consecrated melody. The wounded spirit and the broken heart are attempered and assuaged by the murmurings of Divine song. A plaintive hymn soothes the departing soul. It mingles with weeping in the house of death. ritual of the grave. The last supper was closed with a hymn; and many a martyr for Him who went from that supper to his agony, made their torture jubilant in songs of praise. An essay equal to the subject on the vicissitudes and varieties of sacred music, would be one of the most interesting passages in the history of art. In their long wanderings to the land of promise, sacred music was among the hosts of Israel; and in that great temple of nature, and roofed by the sky, they chant ed the song of Miriam and of Moses. It was in their Sabbath meeting-it resounded with the gladness of their jubilees. When Solomon built a house to the Lord, it was consecrated with symbols, and psalteries, and harps, with the sounds of trumpets and the swell of voices. As long as the temple stood, music hallowed its services; and that music must have been supremely grand which suited the divine poetry of the inspired and kingly lyrist. Israel was scattered the temple was no more. Silence and desolation dwelt in the place of the sanctuary. Zion heard no longer the anthems of her Levites. A new word, that was spoken first in Jerusalem, had gone forth among nations, and that, too, had its music. At first it was a whisper among THE grandest office of music is that in which, no doubt, it originated—that in which, early, it had its first culture; in which, latest, it has its best—I mean its office in religion. In the sanctuary it was born, and in the service of God it arose with a sublimity with which it could never have been inspired in the service of pleasure. More assimilated than any other art to the spiritual nature of man, it affords a medium of expression the most congenial to that of nature. Compared with tones that breathe out from a profound, a spiritually musical soul, how poor is an allegory which painting can present, or that symbol can indicate! The soul is invisible; its 'emotions admit no more than itself of shape or limitation. The religious emotions can not always have even verbal utterance. They dwellings of the poor. Stealthily it after the |