eloquent and beloved brother! Not yet has thy memory perished from among the living. Some fair hand has even just now planted over thy grave a rose, which is just opening its petals to the breath of spring. Thy impress is left on many a heart. Nor can it be obliterated with the present generation. The mark which thou hast left. on the moral and religious character of this youthful, this rising state, must remain indelible. The stone that stands over thy resting-place may crumble and perish, and thy name be forgotten, but the impression for good which thou hast made on this community will remain through all time.

THE SPIRITUAL.

"WHAT is man?" asked the shepherd of Palestine, as he was watching his flocks by night, and looking up to the heavens. The same question has been asked, again and again, age after age; but who has answered it? Who can answer it? Who can clear away the mystery that hangs over man's being and nature? Of the first consciousness of our own existence we have no memory. By which of the senses we first obtained a knowledge of the material world we can not now tell. Reason and philosophy teach us that by touch we first derived our notions of materiality. We wave our hand in the air and feel a slight sensation, which we call resistance. We wave it in the water, and feel a stronger sensation of the same kind. We place our foot on the ground, and feel a still stronger impression of resistance to our will. We thus learn that there is something external to us-something that resists us-something beyond the control of our will.

This first fact which we learn is repugnant to our nature. We abhor resistance. It is painful to the soul. The soul exhibits its antipathy to resistance in those dawnings of the love of power, which the child exhibits among its earliest acts. The struggling of the soul to overcome the resistance of external nature, shows that the connection between soul and body is unnatural. Confinement suits not mind. It aspires to be free-to roam at will through space-from star to star-from sun to sun-from from world to world. In its pure, essential state, it knows nothing of limits-nothing of a resisting medium.

The sense of touch furnishes us only the knowledge of resistance, with form, hardness, magnitude, and extent, as modifications of resistance. Taste and smell acquaint us with qualities of matter of very little consequence to us as means of knowledge, except the practical knowledge, which enables us to choose proper articles of food.

Another organ of sense is found in the ear. Material bodies, when acted on by any force, have the power of vibrating. The vibrations are imparted to surrounding bodies-solid, liquid, or aerial-and by them communicated to the ear, which is so organized as to take up and repeat the vibrations, and thus furnish the mind the sensations we call sound.

Another instrument of the soul is sight. The various bodies in nature have the power of reflecting, each for itself, different shades of light-some blue, some green, some red, and others various colors formed by a combination of primary colors. The eye is so constituted as to receive these colors, and thus afford the mind the sensation we call vision. The only notions, however, we pri marily obtain by sight are color, light, and shade.

We see, therefore, how small is the sum of human knowledge directly derived through the senses-resistance, taste, odors, sounds, color, light, and shade; that is all. From whence, then, derive we the innumerable ideas forming our stock of knowledge?

The senses are merely instruments of mind. The eye does not see. It sees no more than the telescope does. It enables the mind to see. The ear hears not. It hears no more than the drum hears its own beating, or the organ its own music. The drum beats, the drum of the ear answers to the beat, and the mind hears. The organ sounds, the organ of hearing sounds in unison, and the mind hears. Whatever sound is made by sonorous bodies

is repeated by the material organ of sense, and the mind is affected by the sensation.

The same power which enables mind to use the eye as the instrument of seeing, the ear as the instrument of hearing, and the hand as the instrument of feeling, also enables the same mind to combine and modify the notions of color, sound, and touch, so as to acquire the wonderful variety and amount of knowledge we possess. Wonderful, indeed, is the variety of ideas derived from sight, combined with touch, and modified by intellect. From my rural seat I see the surface of earth covered with vegetation. The green grass is springing in a thousand spires at my feet. At my elbow a youthful and vigorous pine is throwing its tassels to the summer breeze. At my side is blooming a rose on its native stock. Just before me is a cluster of lilies, white and pure as virgin innocence. Behind me, leaning gently over my head, and by its dense foliage protecting me effectually from the burning heat of the sun, is an old beech, and close by it a tall maple. A thousand varying lights and shades. are beaming before me. I recognize within the sphere of vision innumerable objects of God's creation-the cedar, the fir, the spruce, the birch, and the tamarack, from my own native north; the orange, the lemon, and the cactus, from the sunny south; and the pink, the violet, the locust, the oak, the elm, the pear, the peach, the plum, the apple, and the grape of this fair land. Along the valley is leaping the brook. On the ridge beyond appears the tender blade of green corn. On the north appears the village with its spires, and on the south a rural landscape, with flocks and herds feeding on the hillsides. Can it be that all these variant ideas are derived merely from color, light, and shade? Even so; nothing but color, light, and shade. All else is the work of mind-of mind which can thus, from a few simple

elements, create so vast an amount of knowledge. Did we, from the fact that the elements of all our knowledge in the present state of existence are derived through the senses, restrict our belief within the range of sensuous existence, we should reason contrary to experience. and philosophy. And few are found to reason thus. Few there are who believe in the existence of no beings beyond the cognizance of the human senses. Is there, indeed, one solitary human creature, of common intelligence, on the surface of this earth, who believes in no personal existences except those of flesh and blood? The bird in its cage, though he may never have had a mate, nor tried the free air with his pinions, seems yet conscious that there is a world about him, and other beings related to him; so the imprisoned spirit of man, looking out from its dark abode only through the grated windows of the senses, has, deep in its inmost recesses, a consciousness of some mysterious connection with congenial existences-spirits of the air, of the earth, or of the

deep.

The notion of some connection between us and a spiritual world and spiritual beings, is not with us so much a matter of belief as a sentiment-an instinct. It seems born in us. It grows with our growth, and strengthens with our strength. He that believes nothing-the utter skeptic-if such a one there be, feels this sentiment in its full force and influence. With our ideas of spiritual beings is usually associated superiority. This led, in ancient times, to acts of devotion and propitiation. The polished Greeks and warlike Romans peopled their forests and their fields, their hills and their valleys, their rivers and their seas, with spiritual beings, whom they invoked and worshiped. They worshiped Jupiter; but, with them, Jupiter personified the air, and was a substitute for that great spiritual Being who presides over the seasons, the