thus feel its power, and enjoy its consolations. We may feel heat even when we do not see light. We know that food strengthens us, though we may know nothing of the nature and process of assimilation by which the food received into the body comes in contact with the springs of life to replenish them. There is an unseen, as well as a seen world. Things which are true and eternal are all unseen-have their ground in a mysterious power, which lies behind the sensual world, and are therefore the only proper objects of faith. That which we know and understand, is an object of knowledge, but cannot be of faith. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

The ancient church cultivated, with lonely delight, and with pious diligence, the memory of their dead. To them, "sweet was the savour of their names.' They longed after them as beloved ones who had gone on a journey, and whom they expected again to meet. Their separation from them locally by death, seemed only to make them more conscious of the existence of a deeper tie, by which they felt that they were bound to them. It was a want of their spirits, and that want had been made greater by their having become Christians, that their beloved dead should not be separated in spirit from them. Would Christianty increase this want only cruelly to disappoint it? This they did not, and could not believe. Their language was: "We who live in hope, we who believe in God and trust that Christ suffered for us and rose again, we who abide in Christ, and rise again by Him and in Him, why should we ourselves be unwilling to depart

from out of the world, or why should we lament and sorrow for those among us who are departed? Christ himself, our Lord and God, exhorts us, and He says: 'I am the resurrection and the life; whosoever believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that liveth and believeth in me, shall never see death!' Why hasten we not to see our country, to salute our parents? There a vast multitude of them that are dear to us, await our arrival, a multitude of parents, brethren, and children, who are now secure of their own salvation, and anxious only about ours. What a mutual joy will it be for them and us, when we come into their presence and receive their embrace!"*

"From this turn of mind," remarks Dr. Neander on this passage, "the Christian custom arose, that the remembrance of the dead should be celebrated on the anniversary of their death by their relations, husband or wife, in a manner suited to the nature of the Christian faith and hope. The supper of the Lord was celebrated on this day, in the consciousness of an inseparable communion with those who died in the Lord; a gift was brought to the altar in their name, as if they were still living members of the church ; and it was hence, probably, that the prayer for peace to the souls of the departed was interwoven with the prayer of the church, preceding the communion.

"As individual Christians and Christian families celebrated in this manner the remembrance of their near relations, whole churches also celebrated the re

* Cyprian, quoted by Neander.

membrance of those who had died in the midst of them as witnesses of the faith: the day of their death was looked upon as their birth-day, the day of their birth into a glorified existence. The remains of their bodies were carefully buried, as the holy organs of holy souls, which should hereafter come again into their service, when called into another more glorious form. There was a congregation formed round their graves on the anniversary of their birth-day,) in the sense above mentioned,) and the story of their confession of the faith and of their sufferings was told, the Lord's supper was celebrated, in the conviction of a continued communion with them in union with Him, of whom they had given witness by their death!"

This extract shows what was the feeling of the ancient church, in reference to communion, and sympathy with the saints departed. That this feeling afterwards degenerated into papal superstition, such as prayers for the dead, and undue reverence towards them amounting almost to worship, is no proof that the feeling itself is not a proper one. These errors themselves serve rather to point us to the truth out of which they sprung, and from which they have degenerated. All the comforts which are, in various places and in various ways in the Scripture, given to the bereaved saints on earth in reference to their pious dead, proclaim this communion and sympathy in which they still stand to them. It is this sympathy which, like a golden cord of love, draws us sorrowing after them when they die, and which yields us a kind of melancholy pleasure, when we linger near their graves. It is the consciousness of this sympathy

which strengthens the mourner to bear the loneliness of life, in the sure prospect of a happy and eternal reunion in heaven, while he sings,

Yet again we hope to meet thee,

When the day of life is fled;

There in heaven with joy to greet thee,
Where no farewell tear is shed.

Though, as already said, we cannot particularize and say exactly what is the nature of this sympathy, how far we can be sensible of it, and what are its manifestations, yet some additional considerations may increase our light, and aid in giving more definiteness to our thoughts and firmness to our feelings, in reference to this interesting subject. We pass, then, to another proposition.

II. THE SAINTS IN HEAVEN REMEMBER THIS WORLD, AND THINK OF US.

If the first part of this proposition can be shown to be true, the truth of the second will follow as a legitimate inference. It cannot be supposed, if they remember this world, that they do not think of us.

That we shall remember this world in heaven is evident from the intimate and necessary connexion of our being in this and the future life. This and the future life stand evidently in close and living relation to each other. Like cause and effect; like premises and conclusion; like life and action; yea, like childhood and old age. The future life is a living continuation of this. So close is this connexion, that whatsoever a man soweth in this life, that shall he reap in the other. The very character of our souls is formed

by the various impressions received in the past. These
impressions live in us, and are part of our being; we
can no more be severed from them and from their
connexions and sources in this world, than we can be
severed from our own life. They are part of it.
The child's included in the man,

And part of him for ever;-
The Past still in the Future lives,
And basis to its being gives,

Not it, but of it, ever.

Separate a man, if it were possible, from his childhood and early life, take away all that the spirit has brought from thence, and he will no more be the same being, but a monster. The spirit must have the roots -springs-of its life in the past. It must live in the past by recollection and association, as necessarily as it lives in the present by consciousness, and in the future by hope. What the spirit has enjoyed or endured in the past, and especially what has made an impression on it, is called up, and drawn after it, as by a constant resurrection power. Even in dreams, when the body is forgotten, the spirit roams backward, and employs itself in calling up past scenes, and living them over again. In the past, it acts, enjoys, suffers, hates, and loves. Any event without its history is monstrous, a riddle, and an astonishment; to understand it, we must know its connexion with the past. Then, all is intelligible. So the spirit, in the future world, as well as in this, must stand in living union with the past.

If, at the transit of death, all recollection of the past were blotted out, we would stand on the eternal