OW charming is the natural scenery around us! How beautiful the lofty hills which inclose this fertile valley like a gigantic circumvallation! How picturesque their varied forms: here, with gently sloping sides and rich pastures reaching to their summits; and there, precipitous and rock-ribbed, crowned with native forests! How pure and bright the blue heavens above! How grateful the soft verdure of the earth beneath! How great the joy of existence! How dear those vital sensibilities which connect us with these objects! . . . But here shall dubious and desponding thought point to those tombs and say: "This world would, indeed, be beautiful if there were no graves!" And, truly, [60] time was there were none. Time was when God himself looked abroad upon the land and sea and all that they contain, upon the verdant earth and the blue heavens, and blessed them in their beauty. How glorious then their charms! How abundant and undefiled their joys! No sorrow nor sighing then rent the suffering breast, nor pain nor anguish agonized the frame, nor decay nor malady nor violence led trembling captives to grace the triumphs of Death. For Life then reigned supreme, amidst scenes of pure felicity, over realms uninvaded by a hostile foot and unvisited by fear of change. And there were then no graves! . . . . But what has made these graves and erected these monuments of Death? What malignant Power has thus marred the beauty of the world, and robbed it of its joys? Are not these the consequences of sin, the desolations of Death, the woes of mortality, the sad tokens of guilt and condemnation? O Sin! thou sting of Death! thou minister of woe! how great have been thy victories! how vast thy conquered realms! how galling the tyranny of thy power! These are thy trophies--more widely spread than [61] those of Grecian or of Roman conquerors! These are thy triumphs, unfettered by mountain chains and unlimited by ocean depths, whose memorials are in the dark caves of the deep waters and upon the high places of the earth. Thine, indeed, O Death! is the only universal empire that has ever flourished. How vain the enterprises of an Alexander, the laurels of a Cæsar, the victories of a Napoleon! It was by thee they conquered, and by thee they were themselves subdued! They reigned over a few territories--over a few of the people of a single generation; but thou over all lands, all earth-born tribes, and all generations of men!

      Yet are these graves, indeed, so dread a memorial of departed joys? And would the world be happy and beautiful if there were no graves? Could we now banish Death and live forever amid these earthly scenes, would this be felicity and eternal joy? Ah! no; never while SIN remains! never while unrighteousness and the unrighteous dwell on earth! If the longevity of the antediluvian world contributed to create giants in wickedness and to fill the earth with [62] crime and violence, until one faithful individual alone remained, what would be the condition of human society if Death placed no barriers in the way of crime? How soon would the rank and hardy weeds of unrighteousness overgrow and choke the tender and delicate plants of godliness! The very qualities which characterize the righteous--the gentleness and meekness, the humility, resignation and love which belong to their very nature--cause them to shrink and perish beneath the rage of the fierce and reckless passions and the proud oppressions of the ungodly. How happy is it, then, that Death in time suspends the conflict! Happy, that as the frost of winter consigns alike the delicate and the luxuriant herbage to the dust, in order that in early spring the contest may be again renewed on equal terms, so Death leaves free to the coming generation the field of the world for the great controversy of good and evil! Oh! then, how great a friend to righteousness is Death while sin yet dwells on earth! How potent an ally to curb the pride of the haughty and to break in pieces the oppressor! What sorrows has he not soothed! [63] What pains and agonies of life has he not assuaged! Of what deliverances has he not been the author! How indispensable have been his services! Need we wonder that when other consequences of sin have been removed and sin itself destroyed, Death will yet remain--once the first among the powers that have ruled over man in his rebellion, and now the last to be dispensed with among those that have served in his restoration to the divine favor. For, if Death reigned by sin, Jesus hath reigned by Death, and shall deliver up the kingdom to the Father as soon as Death shall be no more!

      Shall we say, then: It is Death that robs us of our joys! it is the grave that mars the beauty of the world! Surely, it is not Death by which Christ triumphed! Surely, it is not the grave in which Jesus once reposed! Ah! no. Death is now to us the gate of heavenly joy--these graves are now earth's glory, since that of Jesus is among them! Behold his tomb! No proud monument of earthly pride; no Egyptian pyramid; no spacious mausoleum to commemorate, not the dead who lie beneath--their very names [64] unknown--but the power of death that conquered them; no lofty pillar reaching to the clouds and erected by human hands, but a NATIVE ROCK!--fit sepulcher for the Author of Nature--a grave whose deep recessses have brought forth life and incorruptibility, and which is a memorial, not of the dead, neither of Death, but of the living and of Life!

      These tombs, then, shall no longer mar the beauty of the world around us, since that of Jesus makes them but emblems of the destruction of the grave and types of joy to come. Let us, then, approach their salutary shelter and dwell amidst their shades. Let the sorrows of death become our joys, its mourning our rejoicing. Let tears be sweeter than laughter, and prayer than merriment, and penitence than pride, and Christ than all the world, and his cross and sepulcher than home with all its joys. For death is now the Christian's captive, and the grave his legacy of life--the dawn of mortality's night--the spring of an endless year that knows no winter. [65]

[CITS 60-65]