Friendship sweetens life; but the course of human affection is often interrupted, is often varied, is often imbittered. In your father's house the heart is at ease a little, it flows out in pure and sweet affection to your parents; happy in their love and protection, free from pain and guilt, and the thought of to-morrow, you give yourself to joy, and think it is good to be here. The death of a parent is often the first sad stroke. The bright scene vanishes. Pleasure is shut out. Your first sorrow is a sacred season; sacred to affectionate remembrance, to devout resignation, to the fate of immortality. Sober thoughts revolve on the part you have to act. In returning to the world you feel yourself a stranger, and cast your cares on God, and think of heaven as your father's house.

Youth seldom passes without the death of a young friend. Death is brought near, for we grew up together. Many From the grave of a friend

pleasing hopes are laid in dust.

even the path of virtue appears dark and lonely.

The happiest union on earth must be dissolved, and the love of life dissolves with it.

Parents often survive their children, and refuse to be comforted because they are not.

A beautiful view of Providence opens. That which constitutes our greatest felicity on earth makes us unwilling to depart. The friends of our youth have failed. Such friendships are not formed again. Affection is gradually transferred to the world of spirits. We are strangers who have sojourned long in a foreign land, and have the near prospect

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THERE IS A WORLD WE HAVE NOT SEEN.

of returning home. The hour of departure rises on the soul, for we are going to a land peopled with our fathers, and our kindred, and the friends of our youth. The heart swells at times with the sadly pleasing remembrance of the dead. 'Awake and sing, ye that sleep in dust, your dew is as the dew of herbs.' At times we overpass by faith the bounds of mortality, and penetrate within the veil. Our spirits mingle with theirs. We conclude this paper with the appropriate lines of Milman.

It matters little at what hour o❜ the day

The righteous fall asleep; death cannot come
To him untimely who is fit to die ;

The less of this cold world, the more of heaven,
The briefer life, the earlier mortality.

THERE IS A WORLD WE HAVE NOT SEEN.

THERE is a world we have not seen,

Which time shall never dare destroy;
Where mortal footsteps hath not been,
Nor ear hath caught its sounds of joy.

There is a region lovelier far
Than sages tell or poets sing,
Brighter than summer beauties are,
And softer than the tints of spring.

It is all holy and serene,

The land of glory and repose;
And there to dim the radiant scene,
The tear of sorrow never flows.

It is not fanned by summer gale,
"Tis not refreshed by summer showers,
It never needs the moon-beam pale,
For there are known no evening hours.

In vain the philosophic eye

May seek to view the fair abode,
Or find it in the curtained sky;

It is the dwelling-place of God!

THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS CONTEMPLATED IN THE WORKS OF THE CREATION.

A SOURCE of the purest and richest enjoyment to the mind that is under the predominant influence of religion, is the associations of God, arising from the multiplicity of comparisons and allusions in Holy Writ, with all that the pious man sees around him. He converses with God in all the works of his hands. Those associations, with which his familiarity with the divine word fills creation, are at once of the most sublime and pleasing kind.

Does he contemplate the pure and cheering light of heaven? 'God is light.' Does he see that light rising on the benighted world at the morning dawn? 'The day-spring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.' Does the Sun, the source of this light, engage his contemplation? Unto you that fear his Name shall the Sun of righteousness arise, with healing in his wings.' Does the copious and sparkling dew refresh the face of nature, and exhale its balmy fragrance? 'I will be as the dew unto Israel.' Do the fructifying showers fall on the crops and pastures? He shall come down like rain on the mown grass, as showers that water the earth.' Does he stand on the verdant banks of the flowing river? There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God, the Holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High;' 'He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.'

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Is he set down, where the mountains, in all their dread sublimity and unshaken firmness, rise before him, the apt emblems of greatness and eternity? 'He stood and meas

ured the earth; he beheld and drove asunder the nations : and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow;' 'The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee!' Does he mark, with pleasing wonder, the process of vegetation; the blade, the ear,

the full corn in the ear; the first green of spring, and the golden fruitage of autumn? There shall be a handful of corn in the earth on the tops of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon:' 'God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased him; and to every seed his own body. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.'

Does the bow of heaven span, with unrivalled loveliness, the bosom of the dark cloud? I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth: And there was a rainbow round about the throne.' Does the tempest rage? The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet: ' 'A man shall be as a hiding-place from the storm and a covert from the tempest.' Does the thunder roll? The voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty :' 'The thunder of his power who can understand?' Does the ocean lift up his waves,' in turbulent grandeur and resistless might, making the appalled sons of men feel their impotence and helplessness? The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea: ' 'The Lord sitteth King on the floods, yea the Lord sitteth King for ever: 'He stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people.'