THE BROTHER AND SISTER.

LIFE often seems to pass like a dream, from which, as conscious of the illusion, we feel that we can separate our deepest interest. But there are times when the transitory occurrences which touch the outward sense are, too intimately for division, blended with the most profound thoughts of the mind, the keenest emotions of the heart, the most intense consciousness of the soul; when the spirit and its case of clay seem not merely to participate each other's joys and sorrows, but to act with the full force of concentrated energy.

I was abroad when I received the tidings of my sister's short illness and unexpected death. Aware that my father considered it impossible for me to return home in time to attend the funeral, and would not therefore delay it beyond the brief period after death usual in that part of the country, I travelled day and night with unremitting speed, sparing neither horses, men, nor money. During this journey, all the powers of my soul, so lately engaged and interested by many things, were concentrated on one object-that of reaching my father's house before her interment. I seemed to expect and care for nothing else. At times, when bodily exhaustion produced a temporary diminution of restless activity, my spirit could rise to my heavenly Father, in sincere though apathetic acknowledgments of his love,

his sovereignty, and my entire acquiescence in his will. But, oh! I cannot even now recal without a pang, the poignant grief that visited the dreams of my brief and broken intervals of sleep.

I was more than a mile yet from home, when I heard the tolling of the bell; it was the first sound that, since the news of her death, had given me anything like pleasure; it told me that the grave had not yet hidden her for ever from my sight. When passing the village church-yard I saw the heap of fresh earth near our burying-place, and the thought that the light of my eyes was also dust, struck my heart like a blow, of which the keenness yields to stupefaction of sense. I alighted at the house, calm and self-possessed, almost feeling as if I were walking in a dream.

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The bier was in the hall, and tenants dressed in black, and garnished with white ribbons: some of the men wept when they saw me. I went straight to her chamber, but as I put my hand upon the doorlock an agonizing doubt crossed my mind: 'Oh, where does she herself now dwell? Idol of many hearts, did she supremely love the Saviour?' went in. The undertaker was holding the lid over the coffin, in the act of fixing it on. Some servants stood by, gazing their last at my heart's darling. All stood back for me to look at her. The ghastly paleness of her cheek, the icy coldness of her hand, gave me the first, the horrible realization of the words: "She is dead." After a few moments of overwhelming grief, I looked at her again; at that marble brow whose beautiful inflections so lately expressed all that is brightest and noblest in woman's intellect; at the closed lids of those intelligent eyes

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which never met mine but with looks of kindness; that line of features, so lovely in itself, so fit a medium for the soul's light to shine through; those lips which, even when silent, used to tell of sense and sweetness! I held her hands-I kissed her cheek-I gazed upon her until a strange, wild hope dawned upon me.

With a firm hand I unbound the handkerchief from her head, but dared not, for a few moments, turn my eyes to her face to mark the effect of what I had done. When I did, the blood rushed tumultuously through my veins: I threw aside the flowers, thrust my hand within the shroud, and held it with breathless agitation on her heart. 'Does my own throbbing pulse delude me, or can hers faintly beat?' None answered me: but the nurse came near, and touched her, and I saw that there, indeed, was hope. I lifted the corpse-like girl from her coffin, laid her upon the bed, and threw my cloak around her over the robes of the grave. Restoratives were brought, and long used ineffectually, but at length she revived. I felt her breathing, moving, in my arms, met the fond looks of her sweet eyes, heard her voice bless me, and wept aloud for joy.

Would that this story might, at least, influence you not to bury your dead out of your sight until the commencement of that dreadful change which is the inimitable and unmistakeable seal of death!

VALE.

SABBATH MUSINGS.

No. II.

WHO can say that religion cramps the intellect, checks the human mind in its lofty aspirings, or brings down imagination from those aerial heights, where it loves to soar in all the power and beauty of genius? And yet what a common mistake is this! How many labour under it-how long did I so myself! Because the path was narrow and strait, and the wayfarers therein enjoined to be simple, lowly, and child-like; because the Bible was a book for the cottage fire-side, and that to the poor and the ignorant the gospel was preached, how did I imagine that mental refinement was incompatible with religion, and that the bright torch of intellect must be utterly quenched upon its altars.

Widely different indeed is the case. How glorious is the pure and heavenly flame with which that torch burns, hallowed and purified by the light which is not of this dim world, even that light which shined in darkness. And imagination, that beautiful but, oh! how dangerous quality, when left to itself, —what a vast field does religion open for its lofty soarings! Alexander wished for new worlds, in his pantings after conquest: intellectual ambition, though differing in its object, is kindred in spirit to that which animated him; and revelation offers to

the mentally ambitious a world as far above that which has before engrossed them, as the blaze of the noon-day sun surpasses in lustre the spark of the glow-worm. No, never is the human mind so largely exercised, so widened and dilated to the utmost stretch of its powers, as when, passing the narrow bounds of time and sense, it invokes the Holy Spirit of God, and commences its research into the things of eternity.

These reflections are suggested by what has lately been the theme of several Sabbath Musings, and a deep and mysterious theme it is, viz. the agency of angelic beings. While staying at Paris, about a month since, the subject was brought before a Protestant congregation by a clergyman of the Church of England, in a series of sermons; the text Heb. i. 14. "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?"

Had these discourses been delivered from the pulpits of Notre Dame or St. Roch, the strange, wild, metaphysical, and, as far as I could venture to judge, totally unscriptural views they contained, might have been accounted for. The several offices of our great High Priest and the Holy Spirit, were distinctly ascribed to the angelic beings; "to minister" was interpreted" to mediate."

But I mean not to censure or to criticize; to complain that those who sought that house of prayer, instead of bread received a stone; or that the hungering and thirsting after spiritual food were sent empty away. On the contrary, I never returned from a place of worship with more delightful feelings, never reflected with such a thrill of heart-felt gratitude, that those things were not as the preacher had repre