of realities, but it is a mystery we take on trust, and cannot nakedly discern.

And surely you see now what it is only which can separate you from your brethren who sleep in Jesus, or interrupt the communion you have I had with them. Not their death; oh no, my brethren. Death, since it sets them free from the burden of a fallen nature, has only set them free to love you with a purer, truer love. They who live in union with God have life eternal; they never die; nothing in them can die, save all that is evil; they live and they love for ever: whether they be in earth or Paradise makes no difference to their union with Him, and with their brethren in Him. It is not death, but sin, which can put any barriers between us and our departed ones who rest in Jesus. Their sym

pathy is with all that is pure, and lovely, and good; and oh, then, my brethren, in proportion as we make ourselves impure, we cut ourselves off from that sympathy. Hence it was that the mother of a Christian prince, in whom the Church has also recognised a saint, once told him that she had rather see him die at her feet, than commit a wilful sin. Death, she knew, could not separate him from her love in Christ; he would be

as much hers in heart, and thought, and sympathy, when at rest in Paradise, as by her side on earth. But sin, as it would sever him from Christ, would sever him from the saints in Christ, from herself, who desired to abide in Christ. The love of the faithful departed, then-it is only your own evil that can forfeit that; and though not the first or most constraining motive, it may serve at least as a check upon sin to think that those who loved you here, but loved their Saviour also-who love Him more than ever now that in some sense they are with Him-cannot love you, though they would, because of the evil that is in

you.

SERMON XVI.

Music bindicated for God's Service.

COLOSSIANS iii. 16.

Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord."

THERE is a special and well-known power in

music, and in the rhythm of poetry, to attract and influence the heart of man. One of the greatest of heathen philosophers was induced by it even to think that the soul of man itself must by nature be in some very close connection with musical harmony. And this power of music over the soul men have not been slow to turn to account. Ancient lawgivers were wont to set their respective codes to music, that they might be the better remembered; and Arius, and other great leaders of heresy in early Christian days, found no way of diffusing their errors so successful, as that of embodying them in popular hymus. We recognise their wisdom in this by

our own experience; for we know what a hold hymns and sacred poetry have over us, how they linger in the memory, how we turn to them in our devotional hours, how they soothe and calm us, how often, when some high doctrine or sacred thought recurs to the mind, it is in connection with some verse of a hymn. We know with what success hymns have been used by some of the dissenting bodies around us; Wesley's hymns may be said to be the very core of Wesleyan dissent. Or we call to mind the wide popularity of such a book as the "Christian Year" among ourselves. And this sympathetic bond between music or rhythm and the human mind comes out as strongly in Holy Scripture. By the harp of David Saul is soothed, and his paroxysms of excitement quelled. Elisha calls for a minstrel, and it is when he plays that the inspired utterance of the prophet is kindled. No wonder, then, that music quickly became associated with worship, first of false gods, and then of the true. A great modern composer, in a well-known oratorio, has tried to reproduce such a hymn as he thinks may have sounded round the altar of Baal. And David, perceiving, it may be, how by the attractiveness of such worship people were drawn away to idolatrous rites, took ample care to adorn the temple

and worship of God with a rich and abundant service of song. Many of his psalms were written for public use in the House of God. He founded for it a most extensive and costly choir. "With his whole heart," says the wise man, "he sang songs, and loved Him that made him; he set singers also before the altar, that by their voices they might make sweet melody, and daily sing praises in their songs." And when in the fulness of time the rites and worship of the Jewish temple were developed into those of the Catholic Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, (and the more, I may remark, that early Christian customs and liturgies are studied, the more they are found to be expansions and developments of Jewish originals,) they still preserved their connection with sacred song. Our text is to some extent, we suppose, a liturgical direction; as again, are those very similar words in the Epistle to the Ephesians: "Be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves," or rather, to each other, "in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord." The great fathers of the Church follow in the same line. Some of the most famous of them were writers of hymns, as St. Ambrose, or arrangers of Church music, as St. Gregory. The