nobler than those of earth. It changes, as it changed here, by its own aspirations. It inhabits a world of progress still; a world of active effort, not of passive beatitudes, nor yet of irrevocable doom.

We believe that the Christian world has been, and still is, blighted with false conceptions of Death. Men robe themselves in black when he appears; mourners go about the streets. The great punishment, the evil of evils, the primeval curse, declared to have been entailed on man by Adam's fall, is held to be that summons which calls him hence. Yet, under Omniscient Goodness, nothing so universal, so inevitable as death, ever was, or ever can be, essentially evil.—Robert Dale Owen.

MINISTRATION OF DEPARTED SPIRITS.

While every year is taking one and another from the ranks of life and usefulness, or the charmed circle of friendship and love, it is soothing to remember that the spiritual world is gaining in riches through the poverty of this.

In early life, with our friends all around us-hearing their voices, cheered by their smiles, death and the spiritual world are to us remote, misty, and half fabulous; but as we advance in our journey, and voice after voice is hushed, and form after form vanishes from our side, and our shadow falls almost solitary on the hillside of life, the soul, by a necessity of its being, tends to the unseen and spiritual, and pursues in another life those it seeks in vain in this. For with every friend that dies, dies also some peculiar form of social enjoyment, whose being depended on the peculiar character of that friend; till, late in the afternoon of life, the pilgrim seems to himself to have passed over to the unseen world, in successive portions, half his own spirit: and poor indeed is he who has not familiarized himself with that unknown, whither, despite himself, his soul is earnestly tending. One of the deepest and most imperative cravings of the human heart, as it follows its beloved ones. beyond the veil, is for some assurance that they still love and

care for us.

Could we firmly believe this, bereavement would lose half its bitterness. As a German writer beautifully expresses it, "Our friend is not wholly gone from us: we see across the river of death, in the blue distance, the smoke of his cottage:" hence the heart, always creating what it desires, has ever made the guardianship and ministration of departed spirits a favorite theme of poetic fiction.

But is it, then, fiction? Does revelation, which gives so many hopes which nature had not, give none here? Is there no sober certainty to correspond to the inborn and passionate cravings of the soul? Do departed spirits in verity retain any knowledge of what transpires in this world, and take any part in its scenes?

All that revelation says of a spiritual state is more intimation than assertion; it has no distinct treatise, and teaches nothing, apparently, of set purpose, but gives vague glorious images, while now and then some accidental ray of intelligence looks out,

"Like eyes of cherubs shining

From out the veil that hid the ark."

But ou tof all the different hints and assertions of the Bible, we think a better inferential argument might be constructed to prove the ministrations of departed spirits, than for many a doctrine which has passed in its day for the height of orthodoxy.

First, then, the Bible distinctly says that there is a class of invisible spirits who minister to the children of men. Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation ?" It is said of little children, that "their angels do always behold the face of the Father which is in heaven." This last passage, from the words of our Saviour, taken in connection with the well-known tradition of his time, fully recognizes the idea of individual guardian spirits.

For God's government over minds is, it seems, throughout,

one of intermediate agencies; and these not chosen at random, but with the nicest reference to their adaptation to the purpose intended.

*

*

*

*

*

*

Is it likely, then, that, in selecting subordinate agencies, this, so necessary a requisite of a human life and experience, is overlooked? While around the throne of God stand spirits, now sainted and glorified, yet thrillingly conscious of a past experience of sin and sorrow, and trembling to the soul in sympathy with temptations and struggles like their own, is it likely that he would pass by these souls, thus burning for the work, and commit it to those bright abstract spirits whose knowledge and experience are comparatively so distant and so cold?

It is strongly in confirmation of this idea, that in the transfiguration scene, which seems to have been intended purposely to give the disciples a glimpse of the glorified state of their Master, we find Him attended by two spirits of earth, Moses and Elias, "which appeared to Him in glory, and spake of His death which He should accomplish at Jerusalem."

It appears that these so long departed ones were still mingling in deep sympathy with the tide of human affairs, not only aware of the present, but also informed of the future.

What then? May we look among the band of ministering spirits for our own departed ones? Whom would God be more likely to send us? Have we in heaven a friend who knew us to the heart's core, a friend to whom we have unfolded our soul in its most secret recesses; to whom we have confessed our weaknesses, and deplored our griefs? If we are to have a ministering spirit, who better adapted ?

Have we not memories which correspond to such a belief? When our soul has been cast down, has never an invisible voice whispered, "There is lifting up?" Have not gales and breezes of sweet and healing thought been wafted over us, as if an angel had shaken from his wings the odors of paradise ? Many a one, we are confident, can remember such things; and whence come they?

Why do the children of a pious mother, whose grave hast grown green and smooth with years, seem often to walk through perils and dangers fearful and imminent as the crossing Mohammed's fiery gulf on the edge of a drawn sword, yet walk unhurt? Ah! could we see that glorious form, that face where the angel conceals not the mother, our question would be answered.

It may be possible that a friend is sometimes taken because the divine One sees that his ministry can act upon us more powerfully from the unseen world than amid the infirmities of mortal intercourse.

Here the soul, distracted and hemmed in by human events and by bodily infirmities, often scarce knows itself, and makes no impression on others correspondent to its desires. The mother would fain electrify the heart of her child. She yearns and burns in vain to make her soul effective on its soul, and to inspire it with a spiritual and holy life; but all her own weakness, faults, and mortal cares, cramp and confine her, till death breaks all fetters: and then, first truly alive, risen, purified, and at rest, she may do calmly, sweetly, and certainly, what, amid the tempest and tossings of life, she labored for painfully and fitfully.

So, also, to generous souls who burn for the good of man, who deplore the shortness of life, and the little that is permitted to any individual agency in this life, does this belief open a heavenly field. Think not, father or brother long laboring for man, till thy sun stands on the western mountains,—think not that thy day in this world is over. Perhaps, like Jesus, thou hast lived a human life, and gained a human experience, to become, under and like him, a saviour of thousands. Thou hast been through the preparation; but thy real work of good, thy full power of doing, is yet to begin.

There are some spirits (and those of earth's choicest) to whom, so far as enjoyment to themselves or others is concerned, this life seems to have been a total failure. A hard hand from the first, and all the way through life, seems to have

been laid upon them: they seem to live only to be chastened and crushed; and we lay them in the grave at last in solemn silence. To such, what a vision is opened by this belief! This hard discipline has been the school and task-work by which their soul has been fitted for their invisible labors in a future life; and when they pass the gates of the grave, their course of benevolent acting first begins, and they find themselves delighted possessors of what through many years they have sighed for, the power of doing good.

The year just passed, like all other years, has taken from a thousand circles the sainted, the just, and the beloved; there are spots in a thousand graveyards, which have become this year dearer than all the living world: but in the loneliness of sorrow, how cheering to think that our lost ones are not wholly gone from us! They still may move about in our homes, shedding around them an atmosphere of purity and peace, promptings of good, and reproofs of evil: we are compassed about with a cloud of witnesses, whose hearts throb in sympathy with every effort and struggle, and who thrill with joy at every success. How should this thought check and rebuke every worldly feeling and unworthy purpose, and enshrine us, in the midst of a forgetful and unspiritual world, with an atmosphere of heavenly peace! They have overcome, have risen, are crowned, glorified; but still they remain to us, our assistants, our comforters; and in every hour of darkness their voice speaks to us: "So we grieved, so we struggled, so we fainted, so we doubted; but we have overcome, we have obtained, we have seen and found all true; and in our heaven behold the certainty of thy own. -Harriett Beecher Stowe.

FUTURE LIFE NEAR AND REAL.

I confess to you there is something in my mind of sublimity in the idea that the world is full of spirits, good and evil, and the little we can see with these bat's eyes of ours, the little we can decipher with these imperfect senses, is not the whole of