the perils of the sea." Surely; for that faith can say to the Father, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." A sense of this sustaining presence can make any place sanctified for life or for death.

OLD AGE AND DEATH.

"Old age, for the Christian thy rosy evening changes so insensibly into dawn, that there is scarce a night between." THOLUCK.

To the young death may, to the aged it must come. And who shall be better prepared for it than age ? Through a long life of years, what, O mortal, hath God done for thee? How hath he preserved thy life, saved thy soul many a time from death, healed thy sicknesses, and caused thy youth to be renewed as the eagle's! What a succession of merciful providences dost thou see in surveying the past of thine earthly experience!

The sands of thy life are running low. Let this fact instruct as well as admonish thee; let it bring thee to devout contemplation on the great design and end of thy being. Though thou hast grown old, and changed, the earth is still fresh and full of young life. It wears not away. Troops of new and youthful mortals throng these paths of earthly being, as thou art about leaving them. This is well. Thou hast had thy day here; let them have theirs.

Is it not merciful, as thou feelest the weight of years and infirmity, that death is the privilege of the

aged and weary, a privilege, and not a doom? Is not this the noblest thought concerning death? — the privilege of leaving, when the time comes, one abode for another, that place may be given to the new earthly generation, while a new heavenly is awaiting the worn-out pilgrim here?

He

I have been reading with deep interest of a venerable centenarian whose old age was made bright and glorious by his strong faith in the Father of all. As life waned, this faith strengthened within him. could look back one century, and realize that in that time the gracious God of all had never left nor forsaken him, - could read his mercies through the long line of years up to the present hour, and see that all these years had revealed no change to him in the character of the great Creator and Disposer. This aged one was now awaiting, in trust and peace, the time of his departure. He was ready to test in that new state, where time is not measured by centuries, that paternal goodness which, through these many changing earthly years, had come to him.

"The hoary head is a crown of glory, if found in the way of righteousness." Old age is a joy unspeakable" if Christ's presence gives it sustaining light and strength. To such a one, the language of Tholuck again will apply. "I will set my house in order; the task will not be difficult. The best of my property I take along with me. I lay aside every weight, and am ready for the journey. When the traveller has paid his debts in the city of a foreign land, how does he exult to pass the gate as he bends his steps homeward! Sweet, O death! is the thought of thee to the man who could never find a satisfying portion here below, but who, even amidst this fleeting life, still lived and leaned upon the promises of that

which is everlasting! I do not quail before thy scythe; it can cut off nothing which I am not willing to leave behind, that the wings of my spirit may bear me unincumbered away."

BURIAL-PLACES OF THE DEAD.

OUR burial-places should be consecrated grounds. And one proof that they are so, should be the external attractions thrown around them. If we go to the graves of those we loved, to be inspired with pleasing remembrances and hallowed associations, we naturally desire that there be no hindrance to the sympathetic flow of the soul. We would have everything connected with the burial-place pleasant and attractive. But the bleak, ill-situated grave-yard is not so; the neglected walls or gateways are not so; nor are the ghastly grave-stones with death's grim heads and other revolting emblems engraven thereon; nor is the ground where not even a simple tree is seen to shade the visiting pilgrim, or to murmur its breezy requiem over sleeping mortality. These are not pleasant, but repulsive. The mind contemplates them with disagreeable sensations, and goes away from the silent habitations, not with quiet and pleasant thoughts of the sepulchre, but with cheerless views, with dark thoughts and unwelcome anticipations, doubtless thinking, if not saying, "Why should the grave-yard be so gloomy?"

Indeed, why should the grave-yard be gloomy at all? Why should it ever seem to be a place indicating that the dead are not remembered but forgotten? It has not been thus with many nations and people

of the past. The ancient Greeks ornamented their cemeteries with tombs and trees and flowers, and made frequent visits to them. However exposed these burial-places might have been, they were held sacred by all. The Greek public festival, Nemesia, was in honor of the dead. The Romans had, also, great respect for their burial-places. The Emperor Constantine was the first who introduced the custom of interring in churches and temples, which practice was afterwards abolished, from regard to the health of the living.

The trees most usually planted and reared in burialplaces by eastern and European nations, have been the elm, the cypress, the arbor vitæ, and the yew. The latter has been mostly known in England as the church-yard tree. Gray, in his "Elegy," refers to it:

"Beneath those rugged elms, the yew trees' shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap."

It has been suggested, that as the yew tree does not grow in this country, and cannot easily be made a grave-yard ornament, the silver fir might be made to take its place. We have other trees, also, which may

be well used as embellishments in our cemeteries.

It is a very pleasing reflection, that this subject of rendering our burial-places attractive has awakened such an operative influence in the public mind of the present day; that it seems more generally than ever, now, an object to make the grave and tomb less repulsive and more cheering; to render them the agreeable and profitably impressive resorts of respectful affection or bereaved love, so that, while the dead are mourned, the living may be reminded, by appropriate mementos and embellishments around the

sleeping places of the departed, that we shall not all sleep, but be changed; that this corruption shall put on incorruption, this mortal immortality, and death be swallowed up in victory.

A Christian burial-place ought, if practicable, to be a place of trees a rich grove. a shaded retreat. It should be, too, a place of flowers,—yes, a place of

those

"Day-stars that ope their eyes with man to twinkle From rainbow galaxies of earth's creation,

And dew-drops on her lonely altar sprinkle,

As a libation.

Before the uprisen sun, God's lidless eye-
Throw from their chalices a sweet and holy

Incense on high!"

Of all appropriate flowers for the grave-yard and the tomb, no one seems more so than the rose. It was long since thus sung by Anacreon:

"The rose distils a healing balm,
The beating pulse of pain to calm;
Preserves the cold inurned clay,
And mocks the vestige of decay:
And when, at length, in pale decline,
Its florid beauties fade and pine,
Sweet, as in youth, its balmy breath
Diffuses odor e'en in death!"

In our own time this lovely flower is cultivated over many a grave, in other lands as well as in our own. Yet it need not exclude other flowers. Let our graves and tombs be overlaid with flowers; and let these flowers be watched and nurtured by the hand