recurrence that in its familiarity and beautiful safety as experienced, we for the most part wholly lose sight and thought of its miraculous character for ever, and its awful aspect at first. Reflect a moment how the case would present itself, if, without having passed through it, and without knowing that any one had ever recovered from it, the total first appearance of the facts of a state of sleep were suddenly revealed to us. The languid muscles relax and the head droops. The eyes grow dim, and at last entirely shut. The senses act faintly, and all soon completely suspend their functions. The bodily frame, unnerved, stretched out at its length, powerless, imperceptive, if lifted up by extraneous force, drops heavily back. The mind too is its wonted self no longer. No thoughts live within all the book and volume of the brain. The silence of perfect inaction reigns throughout its mystic chambers. The regent I will has abdicated its throne and issues no commands. Nothing hints at the continuance of the soul. Its dread self-sovereignty is gone. Only the rise of the breath and the beat of the pulse tell that any vestige of life and its attributes remains. Feeling, thought, will, consciousness, utterly gone, so far as the man himself is concerned, he lies there an organized chemical mass, with only a vegetative animation. Knowing these facts, and knowing no more, (and these are all that the appearance yields,) who would dare to go to sleep? Whether he was ever to be restored from that oblivion would be an ominous question, impossible to solve beforehand, and the whole subject would be wrapt in tremendous fears and marvels. But the repetition of the phenomena, the recovery of the soul and the body from them, erelong removes every surmise of danger or evil. Soon the whole face of the problem is changed. The alternation of blessed repose with tiresome toil, the escape it offers from pain and fatigue and care and sorrow, the delicious refreshment it bestows, laving the limbs and the spirit with a divinely restoring balm, make humanity thank God for the needful boon and celestial privilege of sleep, within whose enchanted realm of rest opens the boundless world of dreams, in which there are free kingdoms of magic and glory, of joy and love, that make the pillowed monarch and the houseless beggar equal. In the next place, let us see how these illustrations cast the cheering light of their analogies over the subject of death, and upon the prospect of immortality. The first man that ever died was, according to the Scriptures, the murdered Abel. A renowned poet has described the wife of Cain, when she found the lifeless form stretched bloody upon the ground, and saw the fearful change that had passed on him, as trembling with unknown dread and premonitions of horror, and crying to the different members of the patriarchal family, "Adam! Eve! Cain! Death is in the world!" As they gathered around the cold and motionless clay, solemn and dark must have been their thoughts. The eye is vacant and glassy. A clammy pallor is on the brow. The voice is hushed, and every limb fixed for ever. The icy frame is bereft of warmth and force, the marble and ghastly face emptied of intelligence and affection. They speak to him, there is no answer. They touch him, he will never move again. What doth it mean? What awful mystery is here? Contemplating a deceased person for the first time, it seems as if life were utterly and for ever swallowed up in death; as if absolute destruction and everlasting oblivion had overtaken the soul. Now the unparalleled peculiarity of this case is, that death is always for the first time. The passage of ages and the accumulation of knowledge can throw no new light upon it, because in the natural course of events no one can experience it more than once, or, having once known it, can come back and impart the fruits of his experience to another. Therefore death is always a new thing, and in regard to it we are exposed to all the deceptions of a first appearance. If it were in the instance of darkness as it is in the case of death, that no one could experience it more than once, and then was unable to convey his knowledge to any body else, every one, to the end of time, would suppose, when darkness settled around him, that it was the annihilation of the universe. But it reveals anon innumerable worlds of splendor before undiscoverable; and so death ushers us amidst spiritual beings and immortal life imperceptible before. "Mysterious night! when our first parent knew Thee by report divine, and heard thy name, Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed If a man were about to encounter, for the first time, the malignancy, terror, and threats seemingly contained in tempest, night, winter, pain, sorrow, and sleep, and were then met by one who knew all about these phenomena, who would explain to him their beneficent character, show ing him that they would all work together for good, - if he had faith in this instructor, it would be a blessed thing for him, saving him from alarm and anticipating the remoter results of personal experience. So we must all pass through death, each one by himself, for the first time, and Christ, having himself risen from it, tells us beforehand that it is not what it seems, the total destruction of man, but is the deliverance of the soul from the body, to take its place in the deathless realm of spirits. It may not appear so, but when it is over we shall find that it is so, just as in the other cases the first appearance was evil and was false, while the deliberate final conclusion of reason and experience was good and was true. In conclusion, we cannot leave these hasty sketches and meditations without noticing how all their rays converge in a focus on one great subject, the most staggering of all the questions that solicit our anxious thoughts, the dreadful problem of human sin. While he preserved his native innocence, dwelling in paradise in unison with his Maker's laws and in communion with his love, how peaceful was the bosom, how divine were the hours of the primal man! But he abused his privileges, violated God's command, and fell. The first sin appeared, as sin has seemed ever since and still seems, pure, unqualified, hopeless evil. It alienated the favor of God and revealed the frown of his wrath. It destroyed the serenity of man's face, planted a nightmare of fear on his heart, darkened the joys of his life, and sunk the hopes of his soul. It mixed remorse, woe, and despair in the cup of human experience; gave discord to the tones, a sombre coloring to the livery, and hints of hatred and prophecies of destruction to the lessons of nature; turned the pursuing love of God into a haunting vengeance, and removed heaven to a dim distance, surrounded by unattain able battlements, guarded by flaming swords. But shall it be so for ever? Light there may be beyond this black cloud. Sin is incident to that freedom wherein man's greatness and destiny as a child of God consist. In some mysterious way, sin, with its terrible retributions, may form an element in the education and discipline of man, and hereafter, through that power which brings good out of evil, it may turn to good in some luminous stage of his endless career. We will hope that God has some design and method, far too sublime and good for our present comprehension, whereby he will solve the black and stupendous riddle of guilty evil, and bring the whole to a better result than if sin had never entered as a part. Otherwise, the audacity of saying this is not so great as the necessity of thinking it, otherwise, imperfection marks his plan, and partial failure mars its execution. O, surely in some way it must be that even out of the corrupt elements and murky shades of human wickedness and woe God shall make a background whereon to draw the sharper and paint the brighter the plans of his wisdom and will, and the pictures of his love and bliss! The first appearance which was so horrible shall fade and be lost in the final reality which is so glorious. DEAR M : A LETTER. In your last letter you allude to your difficulties upon some points of speculative inquiry, and then, after quoting the passage, "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate; moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he |