and solemnity now attach your thoughts and desires to the better land. He has preceded you thither by only a few years. Rapid is their flight. Hasten to that blessed reunion for which he longed and prayed a family in heaven. Thither let us all hasten by detaching ourselves from the world, and setting our hearts on things above, by cultivating holier affections towards God, a more lively faith in Christ our Saviour, and by labouring with greater zeal in the church; then, when the time of our departure shall arrive, the Holy Dove will shed upon our pillow the calmness and hope with which he blessed his servant the harbinger of the nightless day, in which we shall be for ever with the Lord. Amen.

ESSAYS, &c., ON THEOLOGY AND GENERAL LITERATURE.

THE MORAL INFLUENCE OF THE DEAD.

"He being dead, yet speaketh."

"Their works follow them."

THE influence which mind exerts upon mind is a mysterious and powerful characteristic of our being. Proceeding, as we do, from one common stock, and placed, as we are, in a state of mutual dependence, we cannot live without exerting a mighty and lasting power upon the minds and characters of our fellow-men. This influence enters into every act, relation, and circumstance of life. It begins with moral agency, and extends along the entire line of existence. It is ever flowing out from us through a thousand channels over the surface of society. This is a universal law. None are so distinguished as to rise above its operation, and none so base as to fall below its reach. Men who are apparently living to themselves, or for the good of their families, are, unconsciously, and by a law which they cannot evade, projecting their influence into all future times. Just as we are informed by modern science, the slightest movement, or sound, sends its vibrations into remotest space, so in the moral world, which is everywhere connected, actions, that seem insignificant, may originate influences which will extend and widen till they reach the shores of eternity. Or, as on the summit of some snow-capped mountain, a few snow-flakes, coming in contact, may commence their descent together, the ball, at first too small to attract notice, swells by constant accretions, till it becomes a stupendous mass, and now, a mighty avalanche, it rushes down, carrying destruction and death in its path. Thus a word, spoken perhaps in thoughtlessness, or an expression of the human features, or a glance of the eye, may set in motion a train of influences that shall go onward, widening and strengthening in their progress till time shall be no longer. Every man is the source of impulses which shall be felt for ever in heaven or in hell, and probably in other worlds.

Thus " none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.” We are too prone to feel that our influence is to cease at death. True, that when we leave the world we shall cease to exert any more in

fluence upon it in the ordinary mode, by which living men exert an influence upon one another. "The voice that was eloquent in defence of the great principles of justice, or freedom, or in defending the doctrines and enforcing the truths of the gospel, is heard no more. The

eye

that beamed with affection and intelligence is closed in the socket. The hand that was skilful in works of art, or that was held out to stay the tottering steps of the feeble, or to point men the way to heaven, is wrapped in the shroud." But the influence of the good is destined to outlast all this. "Being dead, they speak." Concerning the bodies of men we may say, "they shall perish;" but concerning the goodness of a regenerated soul, and its embodiment in a holy life, we may say, with equal propriety, "thou remainest." "The earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved;" but the fires of intellect and piety, which are kindled by the breath of "him that liveth for ever," so far as relates to this world, burn on : "they never go out." There are thousands, who have gone to the grave, that "land of thick darkness," of whom we may still say, "ye are the lights of the world." Dark ages, centuries of wrong, clouds of superstition, and other infernal vapours, have been insufficient to shroud the world from their living, enlightening influence. That influence is embodied in a thousand forms of truth, freedom, and piety. It is a living voice which the knell of departure does not drown, nor the grave muffle; nor can any of the noises of this babbling earth silence it. It shall be heard in some

circle of the world's inhabitants to the end of time.

Illustrations of this truth abound. We, for example, now feel the influence of those who lived before us, and whose bodies long since perished. A link, unseen yet real, connects us all with the past and with the future. Those influences which are moulding our character, and working out our destiny, took their rise far up the stream of time; we did not create them, and we cannot arrest or escape them. "By one man sin entered into the world." "If the mind," says a modern writer, "taking its flight from a given spot, were to wander abroad along the peopled highways, and to the farthest hamlets of our land, and, passing the seas, to traverse distant realms and barbarous coasts, every man whom its travels met, nay, every being of human mould that has ever trodden this earth in earlier ages, or that is now to be found among its moving myriads, has felt, or is feeling the influence of the thoughts of a solitary woman, who centuries since stood debating the claims of conscience and of sin amid the verdant glories of the yet unforfeited paradise." Noah is still a preacher of righteousIf his sermons are lost, the moral power which emanated from his example remains. Like a refreshing and health-giving wave, it has rolled on through all ages, and it will bless all lands. So, the two hundred millions of Christian believers acknowledge and feel the power of Abraham's faith. "The law was given by Moses;" and the man, who was oppressed and despised by Egypt's proud monarch, becomes the world-legislator. Words, uttered at the base of a lonely mountain, and by an obscure man, are destined to mould, to a less or greater extent, all the governments, politics, and laws of the world. And, as the whole world, in some form, feels and acknowledges the influence which streamed from Moses, so the whole church feels the influence of the thoughts that passed, perhaps in the solitude of mid

ness.

night, through the bosom of Paul, as he sat in his prison, an old and unbefriended man-thoughts which he spread in his epistles, there to remain for ever. The meditations of a man, whom the world put to death, live to engage the thoughts and kindle into splendour the highest minds, to breathe heroism into all Christian hearts, and to light millions to glory! True, indeed, were the words of the Saviour, in relation to his immediate followers "I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain."

But, we may adduce still more familiar examples, illustrating the mighty power which "the dead who die in the Lord exert upon ourselves, and the age in which we live. An humble, devoted follower of Christ, for instance, goes forth on a Sabbath morning, and gathers from the streets a few degraded, outcast children, and instils into their minds the elements of Christian truth. It was a simple, unpretending act; but what has been the result? The establishment of Sabbath-schools, with all the wide-spread and beneficent influences that have emanated from that institution. Make now the attempt to follow a single line of those influences, and where does it lead us? A ragged, friendless boy, wandering in the streets of London, is accosted by the kind voice of that devoted Christian labourer, and led to the place of instruction. As he listens to the story of the cross a new light dawns upon his mind, his heart is melted, in humble penitence he lays himself at the feet of the Saviour of sinners, and with his soul loosed from its bondage and burning with love, he inquires, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Obedient to the command of Jesus, and the impulses of his own renewed heart, he goes and preaches the gospel in "the regions beyond:" he unlocks the gospel of the Saviour from a strange tongue, and gives it, in their own language, to the two hundred millions which darkness had covered. The faithful missionary has long since gone to his rest, but who shall estimate the extent of that influence which, tracing back to the humble labours of a Sabbathschool teacher, shall end, and its results appear, only when the redeemed of China are numbered with the church triumphant? Or, a woman, of high, spiritual, and intellectual culture, in a solemn, earnest spirit, teaches her infant son to pray, and with intense solicitude* watches over his spiritual growth, in the quiet parsonage of Epworth. This maternal training, sanctified by the word of God and by prayer," kindles in the bosom of that boy trains of emotion, and originates in his soul sublime moral purposes, which are to result in a revived church, and which are to be consummated only in a saved and regenerated world! From this secluded spot, and as the fruit of a Christian mother's instructions and prayers, a light is to go forth which is to illumine the gloom of ages and the gloom of millions, mingle its beams with the latter-day glory, and add lustre to the splendours of heaven. She "being dead, yet speaketh." "And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmanent and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."

Perhaps, however, the most striking illustration of the moral influence of the dead is derived from books, the productions of minds

which have passed from us, but which still mould our thinkings, and guide our lives. Books bring on this age the influence of all preceding ones. "A man's book is a kind of second incarnation of himself in which to travel this earth, ages after his fleshy tabernacle has crumbled to dust: it is a kind of ark in which the mind of its author comes floating down over the floods of centuries." But for books, what worlds of thought, feeling, and imagination, would have been buried in the graves of Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon! But for books, how comparatively narrow would have been the sphere of usefulness, of a Baxter, a Bunyan, and a Wesley: now, and through the press, it is as ample as the earth in its sweep; and their influence is as pure as the light of the sun, and shall" endure throughout all generations." Being dead, they yet speak. Holy Baxter still lives, and enters the sick and dying chambers of this sorrowful world, and the pittance of poverty is sweetened, the gushing tear of sorrow is dried, and the bed of death is rendered soft with immortal hope, as he points the sufferer onward and upward to "the saint's everlasting rest." Bunyan is still a "dweller in this the house of our pilgrimage," leading sinful wanderers from the City of Destruction, through the Slough of Despond, up the Hill Difficulty, across the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and over the Black River, till they "meet the shining ones on the other side." "God buries his workmen," said C. Wesley, "but carries on his work." Yes, buries his workmen, but not their works. "The works of a man," says T. Carlyle, in his Life of Cromwell, "bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene owldroppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of heroism, what of eternal light, was in a man and his life, is with very great exactness added to the eternities, and remains for ever a new divine portion of the sum of things. It is imperishable."

So far we have written on the influences of good books, which are great beyond human calculation. Need we say, that this is the bright side of the picture. The world has had men of penetrating, almost peerless intellect; but that intellect has been swayed by a heart that was "desperately wicked;" and the result has been a false philosophy, an infidel creed, and a licentious literature which is still poisoning the sources of human thought and feeling, and undermining the foundations of morality and religion. The infidel sentiments, for example, which were disseminated by Voltaire, that great luminary of modern infidelity, in his numerous productions of philosophy, poetry, and fiction, were instrumental in corrupting not only the minds of men of his own country and generation, but their disastrous influence survived and still survives him. Like that mysterious pestilence, the cholera, which, we are told, first appeared in Persia, and was then borne on the wings of the wind to other continents and nations, there to desolate and destroy; so the moral poison of these books has been wafted to all the nations of Europe; it has crossed the broad Atlantic, and it is still coursing round the globe, fulfilling its mission of madness and of death. Even now, no power can fix the boundaries of those evil influences which have proceeded from bad books: and the printing press is wielding its giant power to give them a yet wider and deeper range. How solemn is this fact! An ancient artist being asked why he laboured

so incessantly at his pictures-why he formed every colour with so much care, and drew every line with such precision, replied, that he was "painting for eternity." So does the man of genius and great mental power, who, in "this age and place," publishes a book, which is extensively read, in a still more solemn sense, work for eternity. He blesses or blights immortal mind throughout interminable ages. He lays up materials for reflection, which shall augment his own joys or sorrows for evermore. If the human soul passes into eternity in the possession of its present powers and susceptibilities; and if the deeds done in the body" are remembered in other worlds, we can imagine some of "the foremost sons of light," wishing that they had written more for God, and his glory; and we can conceive of others, great, gifted, but perverted souls, wishing, when they wrote their books, that their "right hand had forgotten its cunning," and that their works had fallen still-born from the press, or been consigned to everlasting oblivion.

And

In discussing the subject, we have so far selected illustrations from the lives of men who have left behind them not only a lasting but a world-wide influence, but the same principles hold true in respect to others of less abilities and attainments, and who exert a less commanding, but no less decided, influence in their respective spheres. The obscure man, who never enjoyed the advantages of mental culti vation, and of whose deeds no chronicler takes note, has his own little world-it may be his own neighbourhood merely, or his own familybut there acts and words, of which history will not indite a line, are leaving impressions as indelible as the mind of man can receive. Perhaps every living man is the model of some other; the example after which others are forming their creeds, habits, and lives. Certainly, there have been those whose names have never been beaten "into the drum of the world's ear," and will never be known till "the manifestation of the sons of God," whose sayings and doings supply us with the most powerful motives to earnest action, and lifelong devotedness to Him whose we are and whom we serve. as we, like them, must affect the future, and may affect it for good, we are brought to the important question, What is essential to a salutary influence? We are debtors. We owe the future the same debt which past generations owed us. The past we are not to despise; it may teach us much; it speaks as with a thousand voices of warning and instruction; and every thoughtful, reverent man, will sit down patiently and docilely at the feet of the past. Moreover, it should be remembered that these times are an out-growth-the great issue of all former times. If this age is instinct with life and thought; if it is characterized by great and hallowed deeds, it is because "others have laboured, and we have entered into their labours." Our noblest institutions, our political and religious freedom, and most, if not all, of those humanizing and evangelizing schemes whose successful accomplishment will usher in the millennium, come to us from the past; they form a precious inheritance which has been bequeathed to us by our fathers, and which must not be wasted either by indolence or extravagance, but handed down to posterity, enriched by our labours and prayers. Still, whilst we are connected with the past, we are more immediately concerned with the present and the future.