carp and Cyprian, Luther and Calvin, Wesley and Whitefield, Watts and Cowper-in a word, with all those who shine as a galaxy of brighter stars in the firmament of glory! O, what a spectacle will the one Church of Jesus then exhibit to the intelligent universe!—one congregation, gathered in one temple-the temple of the Divine Presence, with one service, one psalmody, one Sabbath-and that eternal! Then will the ancient prophecy be fulfilled : 'There shall be one fold, and one Shepherd.' The sects who have divided its fellowship, and the schisms which have rent its bosom; the din of controversy which, alas! has mingled with, and often drowned, its sweet messages of salvation, and the petty jealousies which have kindled 'strange fire' on its altars of love, will never cause separation and sorrow more. Paul and Barnabas, Luther and Zwingle, Toplady and Wesley, will contend for no difference of theological or ecclesiastical opinion. All will be 'made perfect' in knowledge and love and therefore 'see eye to eye.' A childlike simplicity, a harmony of sentiment, a community of interest in Christ Jesus, will constitute the mighty millions of glory one in spirit, and one in endeavor. And from the friendship of 'the whole family in heaven,' thus knit in perfect sympathy and love, will spring a pleasure and a joy which the harps of glory will scarce have chords to express.'

*Our Heavenly Home, p. 200.

XIV.

DURATION OF MEMORY AND ITS RELATION TO THE FUTURE LIFE.

"Every one of us shall give account of himself to God." ROM. xiv, 12. "Every idle word which men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." MATT. xii, 36.

"And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." REV. xx, 12.

THERE are few faculties of the intellect of more practical importance in the intercourse and conduct of life, or more essential to the actual education of the soul, than the power of recollection, or memory. It is the mysterious and hidden link that connects the present with the past. Sunder that link, and our past existence, as well as the vast eternity that stretches away in immeasurable extent behind us, would be to us as if it had never been. The bright, the sunny days and scenes of childhood and youth would have perished under an impenetrable cloud of forgetfulness. Those acts of friendship, of generosity, of high and devoted philanthropy, that do honor to human nature-acts that cast their warm and genial influences over the soul and kindle its nobler sensibilities, too often frozen and paralyzed by the cold selfishness of the world, would fall from the bright firmament of intellect and quench their light in the darkness of oblivion. The light of experience would cease to throw its radiance upon the pathway of life; and all that is honorable and dignified in human nature, all that is lovely in morals, pure and elevated in virtue, and all in

human experience that can touch the chords of sympathy and fill the heart with aspirations after that which is great and good, would be blotted from that cluster of virtuous incentives which now burn, like so many lamps, all along the pathway of human experience.

In ancient mythology the dead are represented as inhabiting a sort of nether-world, the dark and boundless dominion of Pluto. Through those vast, infernal regions rolled five rivers-the Styx, or Dread, whose waters were piercing cold; Acheron, or Grief, the stream over which the dead were ferried; Cocytus, or Lamentation; Phlegethon, or Flaming, whose waves rolled in perpetual billows of flame; and Lethe, or Oblivion, which flowed sluggishly through the fragrant and beautiful valleys of Elysium. Of the waters of this last river those only were permitted to drink who were about to return to earthly bodies; and by that draught all memory of the past was forever washed away. These creations of mythology were only conceptions borrowed from the soul-experiences of this life: the waters of Dread, of Grief, of Lamentation, all are tasted here. So, also, the burning pangs of remorse remind us of the horrible Phlegethon, so frightful for its billows of flame; while the treacherous memory seems evermore to be hovering along the banks of the dread river of Oblivion, now sprinkled with its spray, and now plunged beneath its flood. In the ordinary experience of life no one can have failed to observe that as length of time intervenes, our recollection of an object or event becomes less distinct. Most of the events of the past day, though many of them may be of trifling importance, are remembered with but little. effort. The memory grasps them, even in their minutiæ, with a distinctness and perspicuity characteristic of its nature. We remember where we have been, the individuals we have met, what we have said, and what we have done;

but in the lapse of a few days nearly all these things will be forgotten. The entire day, so far as our recollection of any incident or event that transpired in it is concerned, will have become a blank in our past being. The petty annoyances we experience, the little vexations and trials of daily life-nay, our very sufferings and sorrows, however distinctly they now stand out in our painful recollection, will, after the lapse of a few weeks or months, become indistinct in the memory, and, at length, be forgotten. Increase the lapse of time to years, and the dark cloud of oblivion will so completely cover them that no effort at recollection will be able to recall them. I appeal to the experience of every individual-how few of the events of his past history he is able to call up by an effort of memory. Fragments of sculptured stone and disjointed ruins, scattered in the midst of solitude and desolation, now mark the places where the great cities of the world once stood, and are the only monuments that remain of their former opulence and power; so, amid the shadowy past, only here and there a solitary and disjointed monument remains of all we thought, or did, or experienced. Such is the experience of man; the Lethean stream flows around and behind him, and the past is buried beneath its dark and turbid waters.

A modern writer has not inaptly compared the lighter events of life to the traces drawn by the truant schoc!boy upon the bank of sand, and which are soon filled up by the drifting element and disappear; events of higher moment, and which have made a deep impression upon the soul, to letters engraved on monumental marble, which for a long time resist the corrosive action of the elements; but, at length, they, too, become obscure and illegible.

As the mariner holds on his course out into the boundless ocean, the forms of objects upon the shore which he is

leaving behind him become indistinct and confused. His straining eyes can no longer descry the rude cottage by the beach, where dwell the buds of affection and the flowers of promise-all have become a dim and shadowy mass. The lofty mountain, the towering Alp, may still present its broad outline and seem to mock the tardy progress of the laboring bark, and to defy the effect of distance; but that, too, shall disappear. Even while the mariner strains his vision to catch the last view of his native hills, their dim and fading outlines become enveloped in the misty haze, so that what is mountain and what is shadow can no longer be ascertained. But shall not that mariner, when the voyage is completed, return and gaze upon that scene once more? The same bald mountain shall again be seen lifting up its broad shoulders to the sky, and the same objects of interest scattered all along the shore shall break once more upon his sight, and cause his heart to thrill with sorrow or with joy.

Shall it not also be thus with the voyager upon the sea of life? Shall not memory come back to survey, not merely the headlands of the voyage, but the very indentations all along the shore?

We read of a process by which the old manuscripts that had been entombed in cloistered cells for ages, and had become charred and defaced by the lapse of time and the action of the elements, are unrolled and their letters made to appear. Thus, treasures of thought, which seemed to be irrecoverably lost, are brought up, as it were, from the grave in which they had been buried for ages, and enter anew into the currents of human thought and experience. So with the thoughts and experiences of the past life, which appear to have faded away from memory. May it not be that, by the hidden and mysterious sources of intellectual power within us, they are still retained, each in its