Litchfield enquirer., 1850-04-25

es it in the soul--a visitant whose first coming is gloom, but whose continued presence shall be glory. Then the spi- rlt, peering with intense earnestness into the dark unknown, may in vain question earth of the destiny of the soul beyond the grave. and lift to heaven the passion ate invocation
 "Answer me, burning stars of night, l Where hath the spirit gone,
 l Which passed the reach of mortal sight, i Fen as breeze hath flown?
 l And the stars answer him, We roll In pomp and power on high, | But of the never-dying soul
 Ask things that cannot die.
 "Things that cannot die!" God only can tel! us of the spirit-world. He as- sures us by his Son., that death is the child of sin. He tells what is the pow CT of this king of terrors. He shows us "that in Adam all die." He declares to us that, sinful by nature and by practice, we are condemned to death; that we are unfit for heaven; that we are consigned to wo that the destiny of the soul which remains thus condemned and unchanged is far drearier and more dreadful beyond, than this side the grave. No wonder that men shrink from the thought of death, for all his messages are woful and appalling.
 But thanks be to God /! though death be here, SO also is deaths Lord and Master. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. ."- That Savior, Christ, assures us that all who repent and forsake their sins, who believe in him and live to him, shall rise to life glorious and eternal with him and his in Heaven. He tells us that if we are his, those short shafts which death rattles in our ear today shall but transfx, and but for season, the gar- ment our mortality; an1 that the eman- cipated spirits of the righteous shall be bourne, on angel wings to that peaceful Para lise where they shall enjoy perpet- ual rest and felicity. Then it need not be voice of gloom which announces to u; to. day, "Ye shall die as men, and fall as one of the princess" for it tells us that the humblest of men may be made equal to the angels, and the earth's prin- ces may become "kings and priests unto God"
 In the presence of these simplest, yet grandest truths: with these thoughts of death and the conqueror of death and above all, with this splendid trophy of his power, proudly held up to our view by death to-day, l need utter to you no common place on the vanity of life, the inevitableness of death, the solemnities of our after-being. Here, and nov on this theme, the silent dead is preaching to you more impressively than could the most eloquent of the living. You feel it now in your inmost hearts that that great upper range of things with which you are connected as immortals that moral administration of God which stretches over the infinite of existence ; that magnificent system of ordered go- vernments, to whose lower range we now belong, which consists of thrones, Go- minions, principalities and powers, which rise,
 "Orb OCT orb, and height o'er highth," to the enthroDed Supreme you feel that this, your high relation to the Inf mite and Eternal, makes poor and low the most august and imposing scenes and dignities of earth, which fit, like sh adows, through your three score years and ten. Oh! happy if the vivid sen- timent of the hour shall become the &C., tuat;ng conviction of your life. Happy if it take its place in the centre of the soul; and inform all the thoughts, the feelings, and the aims of life! Then shall this tower system of human things be consciously linked to, and become part of, and take glory from, that spirit ual sphere which, all unseen, encloscs us, whose actor and heroes are angels and archangels, and all the company of Heaven. Then would that be perma- nently felt by all which was here and in the other chamber, yesterday, so elo- quently expressed, that "yain are tho personal strifes and party contests in which you daily engage, in view of the great account which you may so soon be called to render;''% and that eft is unbecoming and presumptuous in these who are the tenants of an hour in their earthly abode, to wrestle and struggle toOether with a violence which would