act in the present state. If we could see, what we so ardently long to behold, beyond this veil of earthly shadows, we might have no eyes for the scene around us; we might be rapt in meditation, when we are called to the action and trial of all our virtues.

It was evidently designed, that we should be trained up here, by a severe and lofty discipline, for some glorious state of being and enjoyment hereafter. The moral economy under which we are placed, the spiritual life on earth, was not designed to be vision, but faith,-not rapture, but trial. The departure of friends and kindred to another world irresistibly draws our thoughts thither, and constantly renders us more indifferent to acquisitions and objects here. Heaven claims our treasures, that our hearts may be there also. Faith, moreover, in the invisible, the spiritual, the eternal, is the appropriate faith of beings whose welfare lies in the invisible mind, whose nature is spiritual, and whose destiny, immortal. It is meet that we should be trained by the influences of a world which we see not, and from which no sound reaches us. It is our happiness, also, not only to love God, but to love him with the fervor and assurance of perfect trust. Love is ever doubtful, without that trial; and it is but an impassioned feeling, without that quality of absolute confidence.

Yet a little while therefore are we required to wait, till we can behold those objects and those beings, on whom, next to God, it is right that our hearts should be set. The interval will not be too long for the trial of our faith, and the preparation of all our virtues; not too long to prepare us for the blessedness of a future life; nay, it may not be found too long to prepare us to die, as the Christian should die. To meet the last hour calmly, to resign all the objects which our senses have made familiar and dear, in the lofty expectation of better things for the mind, is itself a great act of faith, and one for which many days' reflection and experience may not be too much to prepare us. To take our last look at the countenances of beloved friends and companions; to close our eyes to the bright vision of nature; to bid adieu to earth, sky, waters; to feel, for the last time, the thrill of rapture with which this fair and glorious scene of things has so often touched the soul—this is an hour for faith unshaken in the immortality of virtue, and for trust unbounded in the love of God, and for the triumphant assurance which long tried and lofty experience alone can give.

The feelings of the infidel Rousseau have seemed to us thus far natural, and such as even a Christian may entertain. When he apprehended that his last hour drew near, he desired the windows of his apartment to be opened, that he might have the pleasure,' as he said, ' of beholding nature once more. How lovely she is!' he exclaimed; how pure and serene is the day! O Nature! thou art grand indeed!'* Yet not as Rousseau died, does the Christian die; but with a better trust.

And with that trust, with a firm confidence in the perpetuity of all pious and virtuous friendships, there is much, surely, to mitigate the pain of a temporary separation. Let us remember, too, that we do submit to frequent separations in this life, that our friends wander from us over trackless waters and to far distant continents, and that we are still happy in the assurance that they live. And though, by the same providence of God that has guarded them here, they are called to pass beyond the visible precincts of this present existence, let us feel that they still live. God's universe is not explored, when we have surveyed islands, and oceans, and the shores of earth's spreading continents. There are other regions, where the footsteps of the happy and immortal are treading the paths of life. Would we call them back to these abodes of infirmity and sin? Would we involve them again in these toils, and pains, and temptations? Or shall we sorrow for them, as those who have no hope? No; we would rather go, and die with them. What do we say? We will rather go, and live with them forever!

But, the awful entrance to the world of spirits-may still be our exclamation-how dark and desolate is that passage! It is a fearful thing to die. Nature abhors dissolution!

Let something of this be admitted, but let it not be too much. Does nature abhor dissolution? Behold the signs of decay and dissolution which the season now spreads around us. Behold nature in her annual death-the precursor of renovated life. But we will not argue from emblems. We will admit that a living being must naturally dread to part with life. But he dreads to part with life, only in a greater measure, as he dreads to part with everything that is his. He is averse to the loss of property, and in some instances, almost as much so, as to the loss of life itself. He is reluctant to part with any one of his senses; and this reluctance, compared with the natural

* Grimm's Correspondence.

dread of death, is in full proportion to the value of that organ. Let us rationally look at the subject in this light. Doubtless we dread the loss of the sense of hearing, for instance; and, when that is entirely gone from us, hearing is dead. We dread the loss of sight; and, that light extinguished, seeing is dead. Thus one faculty after another departs from us, and death is at work within us, while we say that we are in the midst of life. So let us regard it. So let us familiarize to our minds, the thoughts of death, and feel that this dreaded enemy, dreaded, partly, because imagined to be so distant and unknown, has already made its lodgment in our frame, and, by familiar processes, is approaching the citadel of life. As disease is making its inroads upon us and the system is wearing out, as the acuteness of sensation is failing us and the vigor of bone and muscle is declining, let us say and feel, that we are gradually approaching the extinction of this animal life. Let no skeptic doubts, let no thoughts of annihilation mingle with our apprehensions of mortality; let us believe as Christians, that not the soul, but only the body dies and death cannot be that dread and abhorrence of nature which we make it.

We fear that we have occasion to crave the patience of our readers for the length to which our discussion has run; but we would dwell upon this point a moment longer-the natural dread of death. It seems to us strange, it seems as if all were wrong, in a world, where, from the very constitution of things, death must close every scene of human life, where it has reigned for ages over all generations, where the very air we breathe and the dust we tread upon was once animated life-it seems to us most strange and wrong, that this most common, necessary, expedient, and certain of all events, should bring such horror and desolation with it; that it should bring such tremendous agitation, as if it were some awful and unprecedented phenomenon; that it should be more than death-a shock, a catastrophe, a convulsion; as if nature, instead of holding on its steady course, were falling into irretrievable ruins.

And that which is strange, is our strangeness to this event. Call sickness, we repeat, call pain, an approach to death. Call the weariness and failure of the limbs and senses, call decay, a dying. It is so; it is a gradual loosening of the cords of life, and a breaking up of its reservoirs and resources. So shall they all, one and another in succession, give way. I feel'will the thoughtful man say-I feel the pang of suffering, as it

were piercing and cutting asunder, one by one, the fine and invisible bonds that hold me to the earth. I feel the gushing current of life within me to be wearing away its own channels. I feel the sharpness of every keen emotion and of every acute and far-penetrating thought, as if it were shortening the moments of the soul's connexion and conflict with the body.' So it is, and so shall it be, till at last, the silver cord is loosened, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel is broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns unto God who gave it.'

Death is the fellow of

No; it is not a strange dispensation. all that is earthly; the friend of man alone. It is not an anomaly; it is not a monster in the creation. It is the law, and the lot of nature.

Not to thy eternal resting place,

Shalt thou retire alone.

Thou shalt lie down

With patriarchs of the infant world, with kings,
The powerful of the earth, the wise and good,
Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods, rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks,

That make the meadows green, and poured round all,
Old ocean's grey and melancholy waste-

Are but the solemn decorations all,

Of the great tomb of man.'

But of what is it the tomb? Does the spirit die? Do the blessed affections of the soul, go down into the dark and silent grave. Oh! no. 'The narrow house, and pall, and breathless darkness' and funereal train-these belong not to the soul. They proclaim only the body's dissolution. They but celebrate the vanishing away of the shadow of existence. Man does not die, though the forms of popular speech thus announce his exit. He does not die. We bury, not our friend, but only the form, the vehicle in which, for a time, our friend lived. That cold, impassive clay is not the friend, the parent, the child, the companion, the cherished being. No, it is not blessed be God, that we can say, It is not! It is

the material world only that earth claims. It is dust' only, that descends to dust.' The grave!-let us break its awful spell, its dread dominion. It is the place where man lays down his weakness, his infirmity, his diseases and sorrows, that he may rise up to a new and glorious life. It is the place, where man ceases-in all that is frail and decaying ceases to be man, that he may be, in glory and blessedness, an angel of light!

Why, then, should we fear death, save as the wicked fear, and must fear it? Why dread to lay down this frail body in its resting-place, and this weary, aching head, on the pillow of its repose? Why tremble at this-that in the long sleep of the tomb, that body shall suffer disease no more, and pain no more, and hear no more the cries of want nor the groans of distress and, far retired from the turmoil of life, that violence and change shall pass lightly over it, and the elements shall beat and the storms shall sigh unheard, around its lowly bed? Say, ye aged and infirm! is it the greatest of evils to die? Say, ye children of care and toil! say, ye afflicted and tempted! is it the greatest of evils to die?

Oh! no. Come the last hour, in God's own time!-and a good life and a glorious hope shall make it welcome. Come the hour of release!—and affliction shall make it welcome. Come the hour of reunion with the loved and lost on earth !— and the passionate yearnings of affection, and the strong aspiration of faith, shall bear us to their blessed land. Come death to this body-this burdened, tempted, frail, failing, dying body!—and to the soul,-thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory!-to the soul, come freedom, light and joy unceasing! come, the immortal life! 'He that liveth'-saith the conqueror over Death—' he that liveth and believeth in me, shall NEVER DIE!'

ART. II.-Elements of Dogmatic History. By William Muenscher, S. T. D. and Ordinary Professor of Theology at Marburg. Translated from the Second Edition of the Original German. By JAMES MURDOCK, D. D. New-Haven: A. H. Maltby. 1830. 12mo. pp. 401.

THIS work is a mere outline, as the translator confesses, and was originally drawn up, it would seem, as a syllabus of a course