which deepen until all his organs die, and his spirit leaves its native world of sense to repair to a spirit world. Pulsating life vibrates more feebly and slowly within him than in days of old, and the spring of life, wound up to high tension before he first fully awoke to consciousness, and now fast losing its power, will shortly be relaxed, so that the whole mechanism of his body will be absolutely inert. His venerable form bends towards the earth, which will shortly provide him with a tomb; and it is high time for his thoughts and his heart to go forth towards another and higher life.

The falling year speaks to us with an admonitory voice. Each one of the autumnal leaves which are prodigally strewed over the land speaks of the brevity and uncertainty of life. The verdant hues of youth still appear in many forms of ripe manhood; but slowly and stealthily they will vanish, and sere age will come on, until the utmost limit of life is reached, when each human frame, through whose wonderful organs an imperishable spirit is conversant with the scenes and circumstances of the material world, returns to the dust whence it came. Of what importance can you then be to this world, or can this world then be to you? Whatever moral influence or official authority you may now possess, and however useful your social or public functions may now be, you will lie among the perished forms of departed men, as a shrivelled leaf lies among its fellows; and like that leaf, you will disappear with your generation, be lost amidst the crowds of those who once were, and be as fully forgotten by those who shall hereafter be, as though not a relic of your person, or a trace of your presence, had been left behind you. But the remembrance of you may, like gathered rose-leaves, be fragrant even in death.

While autumnal leaves thus teach us how brief and transient is our life, they also instruct us as to the nature of death, as a separation. A withered and fallen leaf is a separated thing; it is severed from the bough or the flower, and from the cluster, of which it formed a part, and its component elements will crumble to ashes, or exhale in vapour and gas. A momentous transition is hastening towards us, which will separate us from all the associations of the world, the endearments of friendship, and the magical attractions of home. How tender and how strong are the bonds which subsist between human hearts! Those hearts of flesh must perish; but the bonds of love are imperishable as the human soul, and as the eternal throne. Distant as the localities of earth and heaven may be, between the inhabitants of those worlds there are mysterious and reciprocal vibrations of sympathetic tenderness: but at present there is a separation. Among myriads of moving forms, the eye vainly roves in search of one which is familiar in the haunts of memory; and in vain does the listening ear attempt to catch the accents of a well-known voice, whose faint echoes are still sounding forth from afar.

Another separation is that of the inward and outward man, when one returns to the dust as it was, and the other to God who gave it. Their union, which constitutes life, is the greatest mystery of our nature; and their inevitable separation fills each instinct with shuddering awe. We wisely guard this temple of our body with reverent care and unceasing vigilance. Fear acts as a sleepless sentinel. A close network of nervous filaments envelopes it, to telegraph approaching

perils from every part of its surface to the enthroned spirit within. Its demolition is certain, and will be complete; but we dutifully study to avert the catastrophe to as distant a day as possible. When the destroyer has achieved his victory over life, he abandons not the ruin, but still pursues his vocation, until all its elements are so dissipated and resolved into other forms, that the keenest perceptions of sense, aided with all the appliances of art, are unable to discover them.

The decay of autumnal leaves precedes their dissolution. They may be torn off by the hand, or be cropped by the browsing beast, when in their best estate. The lightning may blast them, or the hurricane violently tear them away. And so man may be cut off abruptly, and with violence, before his eyes grow dim, or his natural strength is abated. But in her ordinary course Nature causes the leaves first to fade and then to fall. Ripe maturity is succeeded by daily, and almost imperceptible decay. Vigour gradually loses its fulness, and relaxes its energies. Vision, hearing, memory, vivacity, and quickness of apprehension, slowly diminish, in obedience to penal law. Our cherished life becomes a burden which at last we willingly lay down, that we may be "clothed upon with immortality;" and at "fourscore years our strength is but labour and sorrow." Nature quails in dismay at an abrupt and untimely excision; but the vital ties generally go through a debilitating process, and the final rupture takes place when all our ministering friends are awaiting it.

Autumnal leaves are reduced to one uniform condition. Naturally they are very unequal in form and in size, in colour and in comeliness. The flower-leaves of the cactus, bathed in the richest and most brilliant colouring, and those of the gay and variegated tulip, of the modest violet, and of the spotless snowdrop, are types of great variety. Each has a beauty peculiar to itself, and the beauty of the palest flower transcends the royal glories of Solomon. The leaves of some tropical trees spread themselves out like the covering of a tent; some are stretched forth like gigantic arms, and some are little as an insect's foot; but they all inherit decay. As their moisture dries up, they shrivel and become brittle to the touch, and at last become so completely decomposed, that no botanist can trace their original form, texture, or tint. The varieties of men also are innumerable; but, when withered like the browned leaf of autumn, they all are laid equally low, the last indications of superiority disappear, and, though one may lie unburied in the wilderness, and the sarcophagus of another may lie beneath a monumental pile of stately architecture, they are reduced to a uniform condition. Who can then distinguish the paragon of beauty from the plain, or the prince from the pauper? No distinctions of human forms can pass beyond the precincts which separate the living from the dead, so that the silent tongue of the eloquent is undistinguishable from that of the stammerer. No analysis can distinguish royal from plebeian blood; or the brain which was once the sensorium of an angelic intellect, from that of an unlearned rustic. "All the glory of man is as the flower of the grass." The flowers of the grass are superior in beauty to grass; but as the grass withereth, the flower thereof also falleth away. All the proud distinctions of humanity are obliterated within the regions beyond; and there the rich man and Lazarus, Judas and John, lie like autumn leaves in indiscriminato decay.

Every autumn leaf speaks forth its testimony to the living world, that all men must die. The laurel chaplet which adorned the proud brow of each ancient Greek, as a symbol of honour, like that honour, faded away. Some leaves, under an action unfavourable to life, prematurely wither, though the foliage around them flourishes; while others are held to the tree by so strong a stem, that they survive the equinoctial gales, and have sufficient tenacity to outlive some rude wintry blasts; but their time also must come, when, yielding to their destiny, they drop to the ground and perish. Here is an emblem of the absolute certainty of our dissolution; but though the event is certain, it is uncertain when. The seasons regularly revolve, and there is a constant and certain succession of seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night, which, while the earth remaineth, will not cease (Gen. viii. 22). The birds of passage arrive and depart at their usual times; and the leaves and flowers bud and blossom, and flourish and fade in their season: but man knoweth not his time. "I am old," said the venerated Israel, "and much have I learned, yet I know not the day of my death."

In Eden humanity was a tree of life, and its leaves might have flourished in immortal bloom, but our iniquity, like the wind, carries us away (Isa. lxiv. 6). The terrible and just decree meets with no reversal, and admits of no exception in favour of the imperial or the beautiful, the learned or the good. The wisest and holiest die, even as the sinner and the fool. The artillery of heaven occasionally speaks of condemnation in tones of terror to a trembling world; and, as thoughtless man paces over the earth, the mute leaves of autumn, as they rustle about his feet, say to his proud heart, "Thou also, O man, shalt shortly be like one of us!" Nothing is better known than this, and yet nothing is so readily forgotten. Men learn every kind of arithmetic except that by which they so number their days as to apply their hearts unto wisdom, and every lesson of practical economy they learn rather than that by which they set their house in order, that they may die.

Not a solitary fugitive escapes the universal law that desolates the forest and the field. As the last winter withdrew, and its icy throne melted away, all the trees, as though awakened from long sleep, put on their beautiful garments, all new, all fashioned with exquisite skill and artistic taste, and nearly all in light and lovely green. How beautiful they were to our eyes, and how soft to our touch! But, having passed through the natural process of growth, they became subject to the process of decay, when countless millions fell every hour to the earth; and now, behold! the trees are stripped of all their festive attire, and must so continue until warmer suns call forth their umbrageous tufts again.

"Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,

Now green in youth, now withering on the ground.
Another race the following age supplies,

They fall successive, and successive rise.
Thus generations in their course decay,

So flourish these when those have passed away."

The antediluvian patriarchs, who lived ten times longer than our old men, bade fair for immortality, as though invincible to decay. When the dead returned to life, they seemed to have so vanquished

"the king of terrors" as not to succumb to his power again. When a soldier comes forth unscathed from the sanguinary field, where fatal missiles flew thickly around, laying thousands low, he seems to have had a charmed life, over which the angels of death have no power. And gay young hearts, fluttering with delirious joy, are as thoughtless of "the inevitable hour" as the lovely rosebud bathed in dew. But the hale old man who beheld the glories of nearly a thousand summers, Lazarus who rose from the dead, the hero whose escutcheon is inscribed with a hundred triumphs, and the lovely, light-hearted youth, fade like a leaf. Pyramids, temples, monuments, and thrones, built up in ancient days, still remain, but the skilful hands and stalwart frames of their builders have long since perished. Where now, and what, are the men of renown

"Who left a name at which the world grew pale,

To point a moral and adorn a tale?"

In our temples and places of public concourse are statues in metal and marble, the images of distinguished men in the days of our fathers, who have vanished away. Our crowded streets were crowded in other days by active hosts, who, with their busy hands and throbbing hearts, their gleaming eyes and athletic limbs, are fled. Where now shall we find them? and, shortly, who shall be able to find us? Each tenant of the grave, could his voice now be heard from beneath, might address each spectator of his tomb and say,—

"Time was I stood as thou dost now,

To view the dead, as thou dost me;
In time thou'lt lie as low as I,

And others stand and look on thee."

Since Adam left the gate of Eden, a hundred generations have been so many successions of autumnal leaves. Time brought them up, and time laid them low. What time thus did for our fathers it will do for us, and also for our children. We go whither our fathers are gone, and our children will first succeed to our places, and then succeed to our doom.

Why has mortality become the law of our nature? As I contemplate the mutations of our race; as I listen to the universal malediction, "Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return;" as I glance over the relics of departed generations and the annals of perished empires; as I visit the chambers of the dying and walk among the sepulchres of the dead; and as I learn that I also must fade as a leaf, that Death has built his fortresses in the very seats of life, and that, whether we take the tottering steps of age, or in the gambols of boyhood we leap over a wall, every step and every leap is taken in the pathway to the graveI ask, wonderingly and in awe, why I and all our race, made to be inheritors of immortality, inherit the doom of the brute? The answer is, that death is the wages of sin. Oh, Sin! what hast thou done? How wide is thy empire, and how dreadful, yet how just, is thy curse! But for thee human eyes had not been fountains of tears, the surface of this world had not been honeycombed with human graves; and hell had never had one human victim to burn but for thee!

Inasmuch, then, as we are a race of malefactors, justly condemned to die; since life, though respited, cannot be reprieved; and since the

hour of separation must come, and may come soon, it is at once our duty and our interest to study constantly to enhance each other's comfort to the utmost extent of our power. We cannot live long; but we may live sweetly and affectionately together, and why should we not? Why should one willingly add to the discomforts and trials of another? He does not thereby diminish his own. There is bitterness even in the gratifications of a selfish spirit. We cannot be unjust or unkind with impunity to ourselves. A tormentor is self-tormented ; whereas a gentle, kind, and loving heart, in experiencing emotions of love, experiences emotions of bliss. Children, revere and love your parents, for you will soon have no parents on earth to revere. Husband and wife, the dearest companions in this world; brother and sister, united by ties which only death can dissolve; and members of the same Church, whose lot Christ has cast in each other's society, and who worship and work together for him, let it be your unceasing endeavour, not how little, but how much you can bless each other, and can render this short life on earth, which comes but once, as much as possible like the upper life of heaven. And when the sad and solemn hour of separation arrives, instead of having to say to yourself, as a survivor gazing on the dead, "Alas! that I should ever have wantonly wounded and wrung that poor heart with suffering," you will remember the incidents of the past with grateful satisfaction, and with confidence and pleasure may anticipate the re-unions of heaven. Thus David as he wept over the dead body of Jonathan, his friend, exclaimed, "O Jonathan, I am distressed for thee, my brother: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women!" 2 Sam. i. 26.

Will autumn leaves ever live and flourish again? Never. The organic matter of which they are formed has been subject to the natural processes of chemical assimilation a thousand times over, in as many various forms of life, and will be so a thousand or ten thousand times more; but each leaf, as such, can have no future life. New growths spring from old decays. Nothing is lost; nothing is gained. Succession is the order of Nature. Nature knows no resurrections from the dead. Such phenomena cannot arise from the action of natural law. Resurrection, like creation, is the miraculous act of Him who ordained and instituted law. He can do it, and his word declares that it shall be done. "The Scriptures," which Sadducean materialists knew not, reveal it, and it will be accomplished by "the power of God," which they did not know.

If I ask where the decomposed bodies of the dead are, and how they shall come forth, I attempt to constitute my weak and obtuse sense the guage of truth and of possibility. But the question may be answered by another. Where now are the leaves which the next month of June will witness on all the trees of the land? and where are the flowers, fruits, and corn which, within twelve months, will be? They will not be new creations. The elements of which they will be made are in existence now, and have been from the time of the creation. But the perceptions of sense cannot recognize them. They are hidden in solid, liquid, vaporous, and gaseous substances. But God will bring them forth. Their forms of life and beauty will appear where nothing now appears, as the productions of "the power