fraught with power, is what every one must, without qualification, admit. How blest must be the recollection to a Howe, a John Bunyan, a Baxter, a Butler, and many others who might be named, that, though now they surround the throne, and are worshipping within the vail, like setting suns they have left a trail of light and glory behind them, by which others can see a way to the rest that remaineth to the people of God! How refreshing to them to feel that, though their lips are sealed in death, the echoes they have left behind them still break forth in sweet music on cottage thresholds, and are the joy and the gladness of many a country congregation!

Knowing well that what we do, or say, or print, or paint, or build, will act permanently behind us, how fervent should be our prayer that we may be so sustained by the Holy Spirit of God that the least influence we leave after us may be a missionary of great beneficence, a teacher of souls, a motive to live holy, and a help to die happy!

Now, the first prescription I would give the reader, in closing my remarks upon this part of my subject, is, Be Christian, and your influence will be so; be good, and you will do good. It is not what men try to play that will influence the ages, but what men actually are. It is not what a man does or says that tells most after him, but it is what a man is. We forget the rash word, we can forgive the incidental and hurried and sinful act, because we see behind both a character whose tone and temperament is moulded and inspired by the principles of the Gospel of Jesus. It was not what Jesus said and did that struck mankind, so much as what Jesus was. "Never man spake like this man," just because never man lived like this man. The unconscious influence of a Christian man is the power that shapes society most rapidly, and tells most powerfully, and leaves behind it the most enduring, beneficent impressions.

And, in order to be Christian, study, first, God's holy word. The great original is there, of which we are designed to be copies. The motives, the hopes are there, which we are to study, and seek to be inspired with. Looking into that perfect law of liberty, we are informed as by the Spirit of the Lord.

And the next, and perhaps the most important prescription is, Seek to have your hearts inspired by the Spirit of God. It is only the pure fountain that brings forth pure water. You may arrange your outward actions as beautifully as you like, you may adjust your attire as you please, but all these will be faults and failures, and on the whole will have little influence. Whereas, if the heart be right, we need not think of any external adjustment to catch man's eye. The good tree will produce the good fruit; the pure fountain will bring forth pure streams. If the centre from which all proceeds is holy, the radii of influence that start from it will be holy also. Therefore, pray that the Holy Spirit will give you a new heart, and, having that new heart, go forth into the spheres that you occupy, the employments, the trades, the professions of social life; go forth into the high places or into the lowly places of the land; mix with the roaring cataracts of social convulsion, or mingle amid the eddies and streamlets of quiet and of domestic life; for, whatever sphere you fill, you will carry into it a holy heart; and, having regenerated hearts, that is, being Christians, you will radiate around you life and power, that will reflect themselves upon you again in happiness, and you will leave behind you a holy and a beneficent influence, that will meet you again at the judgmentseat of Christ, concentrated in these beautiful and musical accents, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

CHAPTER II.

VOICES FROM GLORY.

From the eternal shadow rounding
All our sun and starlight here,
Voices of our lost ones sounding

Bid us be of heart and cheer,

Through the silence, down the space, falling on the inward ear.

Know we not our dead are looking
Downward with a sad surprise,

All our strifes of words rebuking

With their mild and loving eyes?

Shall we grieve these holy angels, shall we cloud these blessed skies?

Let us draw their mantles o'er us,

Which have fallen in our way;

Let us do the work before us,

Cheerly, bravely, while we may,

Ere the long night-silence cometh, and with us it is not day.

"Abel being dead yet speaketh."- HEBREWS 11: 4.

In the former chapter, I have spoken of the fact that every man leaves behind him, to be transmitted to successive generations, influence either for good or for evil; that the common notion, that when our bodies are buried the good and the evil die with us, is not correct; but, on the contrary, that the moral lineaments of man are only cleared up, not obscured, by the touch of death, and that whilst one immortality has passed into the skies, another immortality walks the world, and executes its mission of blessing or of bane to

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those who are left behind. I showed that it is not in our choice to determine whether we shall leave an influence or not, but that it does rest with us to determine whether that influence shall be a blessing or shall be a curse. I endeavored to demonstrate that not a life has been spent, not a work has been written, not a sculpture has been chiselled, not a painting has been finished, that has not left behind an enduring influence, and become creative of good or pernicious impressions. I showed that whoever speaks, or whoever uses that extraordinary — but, because common, it has ceased to be extraordinary power, the press, in making his sentiments known, touches a lever the sweep of which no arithmetic of ours can calculate. I preach a sermon. It is heard by some fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen hundred people. If I print it, it may, peradventure, be read by fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen thousand people. The loaf that I break among my people feeds not merely a thousand; but, by the touch of printers, may be distributed among and feed twenty or thirty thousand. And thus there is an influence going out from every one who speaks or writes, more or less extensive; and that influence, in virtue of the press, survives the speaker. Whilst the glorified soul is praising God beside the throne, he is still living, acting, speaking, as a missionary upon the earth below; neither idle in the midst of his joys, nor inactive in the world he has left behind; but being dead he yet speaks. We endeavored to show that recent discoveries of science, which we have brought to illustrate the successive chapters of Genesis, all confirm the same position. It is surely one of the most solemn facts, that a word once spoken— not only every bad word, but every idle word. never can be

extinguished. I showed there was a law called the law of infinite division of matter. If I divide anything in half, I can divide that half, and I have a fourth; that fourth, and I have an eighth; that eighth, and I have a sixteenth; that

sixteenth, and I have a thirty-second; in short, I cannot conceive any matter to become so small, by division, that it can be incapable of yet further division. If I utter a sound, that sound agitates the air, and it will go on agitating the air round and round the globe, till the day of judgment. It will not cease to act by the law of dynamics, by the law of acoustics, by the law of division of matter. Now, what a solemn thought should this be, that the words which were spoken to-day may be reheard by us at the judgment-seat of Christ! that the expressions we have used to-day may rise at that moment, either in the symphonies of the sweetest music, or in the crashes and reverberations of a righteous and terrible retribution! I showed, too, that what we do is no less lasting than what we say. I explained to you that, in order to see an object, a ray of light must come from that object, and touch my eye. We know that light travels at the rate of two hundred thousand miles a second, and that it takes four minutes in reaching us from the sun. I showed you that, in order that an object may be seen, a ray of light must go from it to the distant beholder. Now, the telescope brings stars within our view from which light has been travelling, I believe, six thousand years. And, if light comes from other orbs to us, and rays proceed from us to them, it may be that a ray of light may have started from the face of Adam when he was in paradise, and it will be now touching some distant orb, and may present to them a picture of our earth as it was then; so that this world will present to different orbs different scenes in its history, if their senses be sufficiently acute. Thus, they are seeing in one Martin Luther burning the Pope's bull; and in another they are regarding the Crusades, and Peter the Hermit, and Walter the Penniless. And so the whole universe may become translators of the events consummated in this world; and the things done upon the bosom of the earth will never cease being seen, but spread