after a great conflagration. The renewed man says, "I'm better," and goes on his way rejoicing. Not only does he gladly know that God loves him; but the love of God is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost that is given unto him. Need I add, that in both cases we observe also an assurance of deliverance. The Israelite knew that he was saved. He could not but know it. All his friends and acquaintances knew it too. And a saved soul knows, in like manner, that it has been saved. A man cannot repent and not know it. A man cannot trust in God and not know it. A man cannot be cured and not know it. A man cannot be happy and not know it. I confess, indeed, that there are delusive cures. Invalids sometimes fancy that they have been recovered when it is not so. So that the great test after all is the possession of spiritual health, that is, a daily delight in keeping the commandments of God. Yet, we repeat, where the cure is genuine, the restored individual will soon know the fact, and all who are round about him will know it too.

Finally, we find worship and adoring gratitude in both cases. All murmuring is at an end, and holy devotion begins. The Israelites, it is true, were somewhat superstitious and idolatrous in their worship; for they kept the brazen serpent as a relic, or what they thought was it, and paid to it religious devotions. But the iconoclastic Hezekiah (for the relic had survived to his day) broke it in pieces and called it Nehushtan, that is, a bit of brass, and nothing else (2 Kings xviii, 4). But the Christian worships a nobler and grander object. He worships the Lamb of the tree here, and he shall worship him for evermore. When the wilderness has been passed, Jordan crossed, and Canaan reached, they who had been cured of the serpent's bite by the uplifted Sufferer on earth will be heard singing, as age after age rolls on, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.

A FUTURE LIFE AND THE DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE.

THERE are few questions more solemn and more weighty than the one proposed, some thousands of years ago, by the patriarch of Uz, If a man die shall he live again? Is the brief period of threescore years and ten, it may be, the whole of life? Does the physical change which we call death terminate our conscious existence and our conscious experience? These are questions old as the race, and yet they are ever new. They

are questions which start up in the mind of every new entrant into life, coincident with the first dawn of budding thought, The great problem of another life, and that an endless one. after the present is closed, is one which comes up some time or other before every thinking individual. In hours of serious mood, it presents itself to the pensive Christian, prompting him to examine the foundations of his hope, and the genuineness of his faith. Sometimes it will protrude its unwelcome shadow into the house of mirth and startle the thoughtless in the midst of their folly. At other times it will disturb the votary of pleasure, in his moments of supreme enjoyment, with the claims of a hereafter, and with its dread prelude death; and now and again it will break upon the busy brain of the man of business, and compel a momentary truce to schemes for getting gain and growing rich. It is a question, above all others, big with the most solemn significance. The passing concerns of to-day and to-morrow, the fleeting pleasures of life, the fate of kingdoms, or the destiny of empires, all these are but as bubbles, light as air, compared with this question of questions, this problem of problems, Does death terminate my existence as a living, thinking, and conscious being? Or, as a living writer thus puts it:

What is this life? And what to us is death?

Whence came we? Whither go? And where are those
Who, in a moment stricken from our side,

Passed to that land of shadow and repose?

Are they all dust? And dust must we become?
Or, are they living in some unknown clime?
Shall we regain them in that far-off home,

And live anew beyond the shores of time?

These are some of the sublime issues of the question under discussion.

Heathen philosophy, as such, can offer no consolation to a mind perplexed with these enquiries; nor can it throw any light upon these pressing problems. A heathen poet, speaking of man and his destiny, gives utterance to the following mournful sentiments, almost beautiful in their sorrowfulness. He says

The meanest flower we trample in the field,
Or in the garden nurture, when its leaf
In autumn dies, forebodes a coming spring,
Which from brief slumber, soon shall wake again:
Man wakes no more! Man, peerless, valiant, wise,
Once chilled by death, sleeps hopeless in the dust,
A long unbroken, never ending sleep!

There is a tinge of inexpressible sadness in such utterances as

these. They seem like the lone wail of some benighted spirit, that, in the darkness and solitude of its own orphanhood, has lost its way to God, and in which the damp chilling atmosphere of gloom has quenched even that "hope which comes to all."

Thank God, we live under a brighter and sunnier sky! The light of the cross and Gospel truth has lit up the portals of the grave, and brought life and immortality to light.

The existence of a Supreme Being, as a Great Spirit-whose existence we here assume without any attempt at proof-we say the existence of such a Being, without material organs, as we understand them, and with capacities of thinking, feeling, and willing of infinite perfection, proves, at least, the possibility of similar beings existing in a lower plane of things, that is, in the plane of creaturehood, without the environment of what we call the body. In other words, if the existence of God is admitted, the possibility of a future life, so far as the mere possibility goes, is conceded-that is, the possibility of beings existing under quite different conditions from the present.

The authors of the Unseen Universe, in their great work, assume at starting the existence of God-the Supreme Governor of the world, as a self-evident truth. They have been found fault with for this by the critics, who allege that a manifest and unfair advantage is gained in the discussion of the subject by this assumption, and that the authors ought to have reasoned out their conclusions as to the possibility and probability of a future life from purely physical data.

It is not easily seen how the authors could have ignored so fundamental a point as this in the treatment of their subject; or that anything is gained by the assumption beyond establishing the possibility of intelligences existing under conditions different from the present mundane order of things. The ground justifying this assumption lies in a small compass, and commends itself to the commonest intellect. Man is either the highest order of intelligent existences in the universe, or he is not. But man,-even the most gifted, the most highly cultured, and the most intelligent of the sons of men,-in their highest flights of thought, are confessedly and incontrovertibly the merest children in knowledge, the veriest babes, groping their way in the dark on the outer skirts of a measureless ocean of mystery-the mystery of life and being-lying far beyond their ken. The very wisest of them are willing to acknowledge this, and confess their ignorance in this respect. Man knows not himself, nor the laws of his being, not to speak of the great globe on which he dwells, or the still greater universe in its boundlessness and infinitude. Therefore, to suppose man the mere creature of a day, limited, conditioned, and

circumscribed, as he is, in all the avenues of his being, to be the highest type of intelligence in the universe, is to mock our intellect and insult our reason, and to do violence to the very laws and conditions of thought. If man, then, is not the highest intelligence, there must be a higher, and if a higher, that higher intelligence must exist far above and removed from our present material conditions and mode of life, and so we are necessarily driven-we cannot help ourselves if we think at all-to the conclusion, which Professor Tyndal felt himself compelled to come to, "That a power inscrutable caused all things;" and we add, that that Power must be Spiritual and not material.

Having cleared the ground so far, we now come to the consideration of the evidences which go to make a future life probable, as these are supplied from reason and the facts of human nature.

The ordinary and common arguments for a future lifewaiving those deduced from the character of God-express themselves to something like the following effect :

(1.) That the whole economy of life, from our entrance into the world at birth till our exit at death, seems to indicate that our existence here is not an end in itself, but a means to some ulterior end.

(2.) That there are instincts, yearnings, and aspirations in every breast, which refuse to be satisfied with anything terrestrial, whether fame, power, pleasure, or wealth, and that the analogy of nature would seem to point to another field of existence where these respective desires and aspirations will find their completion and satisfaction.

(3.) That the belief in a future life, in some form or other, is so general among mankind, in all countries and in all civilizations, as to indicate that it is one of the primary integrant elements of our moral being.

The first argument-viz., That human life, through all its successive stages, seems to be only so many correspondingly successive steps or means to some ulterior end, when reasoned out to its legitimate issues, would seem to demand, as a corollary, the idea of a future life.

We live largely on the future, for hope, while it remains, is always anticipating; its sphere, indeed, is in the future. We plant trees and build houses, we form plans and originate schemes, and make a thousand arrangements in our every day life, with an exclusive eye to the indefinite future. Nor is this all. Nature herself, in her method and order, is prospective in her processes. If we look at the case of a child,—and it is, in this respect, a type of humanity in the mass, we will see

more clearly the force of this remark, as well as the drift of the general argument. We find that the child anterior to its birth is being prepared for entering upon a new sphere of being. These preparations are all prospective, and point forward to a future of its life. By and bye, at a farther stage of its history, the play impulse starts into activity, and for a while becomes the dominant rule of its life. In the exuberance of its spirit, it turns everything into play and mirth. Activity is joy ; inaction pain; and even rest is only tolerated in the unconsciousness of sleep. Life is young, and the law of its being is activity. At this period every exercise of the physical faculties gives pleasure, and the pleasure thus attained becomes in turn the impelling motive to renewed activity; so that youth in the dew and blush of being is a busy round of restless energy and exhilaration. All this is beautiful and natural; and it is peculiarly beautiful that the first experiences of young life should be joyous-that its first deep draught of the cup of experience should be sweet, and its morning hours should be happy and full of sunshine. But even this is not an end in itself; for the experiences of the child have also a prospective bearing, and point forward to a farther stage of its life. The restless activity of youth is followed, as a necessary result, by the growth and development of the physical frame, so that the body is gradually fitted for the rough battle of life, on which it enters at a farther stage of its history. But even this result is only a subordinate end; for as the mind is the gem, and the body only its outer casket, a healthy and vigorous frame is necessary as a basis for the complete development of a strong intellect, or, as it is commonly put, " a sound mind in a sound body." By and bye the body reaches its completion, and growth ceases, and the purposes of life are served by its being maintained in the status quo. It is different, however, with the mind and moral powers. There seems to be no limit to their expansion, either in their nature, or in their capacity. Take the case of the intellect. The happiness of the youth in the free exercise of his physical powers finds its parallel in the delight of the adult in the search after and discovery of truth. Each new attainment, every fresh advance in knowledge, is invariably rewarded by increased powers of thought, and by enlarged capacity for enjoyment. Each new point gained becomes the starting point to fresh advances and to yet higher attainments, followed by correspondingly enlarged susceptibilities of enjoyment. Each new altitude reached, not only increases the desire to reach higher and yet higher altitudes, but it brings with it increased powers of vision, and increased and increasing susceptibilities for increased and