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A few days afterwards, the master of the shop received a call from a stranger of prepossessing appearance, who ordered a coffin of certain remarkable dimensions. They agreed upon the wood, the quality of the trimmings, the number of silver studs and the engravings for the plate, but there was considerable haggling about the price, the stranger declaring it an exorbitant one, while the undertaker as sured, it was as low as he could possibly afford, considering the unusual size. There were some pretty hot words before they settled the matter, but they finally came to an amicable arrangement and one half the money was paid down, with the understanding that the coffin should be finished and sent home the next evening. Accordingly at twilight of the following day, the gigantic coffin, draped with a heavy pall, was borne thither on the shoulders of four porters, the young journeyman preceding them, with the bill and screw-driver in his pocket. Arrived at the designated spot, they paused before the front door. It opened silently and a solemn looking servant, with dress as black as the cloth that shrouded the coffin, motioned them to go up a long, dim alley at the side of the mansion. Following his directions, they came at last to a small shadowy court, into which opened a rear door. Unseen hands drew it back, while a sepulchral voice whispered, go forward." They obeyed, but the hearts of the porters, grim looking fellows as they were, quailed within them.

A few steps, brought them to a pair of sliding doors. They vanished as by magic, and disclosed a spacious room, brilliantly lighted, but whose walls and windows were curtained with black. A dozen or so persons were assembled, all dressed as citizens, but in the deepest mourning, their faces hidden in their hands, as though their grief was too terrible to be borne. One of them, it was he who ordered the coffin, advanced from the circle and bade the porters place it on the floor in the centre of the room. He then remunerated them liberally and dismissed them from the house; the giant remaining alone with the mourners. They sat like statues, broken sobs only attesting their vitality. The chief one,

only he who had spoken to the porters, seemed able to command his feelings. He directed the pall to be removed, and then taking down a candle examined the casket with the utmost attention, a frown meanwhile distorting his forehead. Finally he spoke and angrily too: "This is not the coffin I ordered; it is neither broad enough or long enough; your master is a villain to attempt such a cheat; yes," seeing the giant color, "a villain and he shall either make me another within twelve hours or give me back my money."

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The journeyman, who was proud of the honor of the shop, spoke up at last very firmly and declared that the coffin tallied, exactly with the directions given. am certain of it sir, for I made the measurement myself, remarking as I did so, to my master, that the corpse was exactly my own height, seven feet, two inches.

Yes, that's his height, and that's the measure I left, but you, you don't mean to say that you are seven feet, two, do you. If you dare to, you lie and I am not afraid to tell you so."

Stung to the quick by this bold language, the young man reiterated his assertion still more strongly, exclaiming at last,

I'll give you the evidence of your own eyes, sir, here," taking a pocket rule from his coat, "measure the coffin." The chief did so, it was seven feet, two inches. "Are you satisfied now, of my master's integrity," he demanded.

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Yes, yes, but you,' " and he swerved. Without another word, the young man undid the screws, lifted the lid and stretched himself in the coffin, exclaiming as he dropped his head on the pillow, "see,

see.

In a second, the recruiters were upon him, two of them guzzing his mouth, others binding his legs and arms, and others still boring air-holes in the sides of the coffin. Telling him to be quiet and fear nothing. for only glory awaited him, they screwed down the lid. Six vigorous men carried it immediately outside the gates of the city, where carriages, ordered beforehand were awaiting them. Depositing their burden in one of them, the horses were whipped up, and the coffin, with its living occupant, was soon borne safely to

the frontiers of Saxony, Arrived there, they halted, opened it, and dragged from it the poor young man, half suffocated, and nearly as white as a veritable corpse. They placed him between guards in another carriage, and when the rest returned to Dresden to practice their iniquity on some other unhappy wretch, the three proceeded rapidly to Berlin.

The Elector, overjoyed with this new acquisition, while he at once forced the yo ing giant to enter his guard, took especial pains to render the service agreeable, and as he soon proved himself a fellow of spirit and courage, he rapidly advanced him. Unlike many other poor victims, this last one had no peculiar attachments to the city of his nativity, nothing, save a mere local love endeared it to him. An orphan, with neither brother or sister, there was none to mourn for him, none to be homesick for. The fair, blue-eyed girl who had stolen his heart from him, or rather to whom he had given his heart without a single love-look from her, he had seen pass out of the church door, a few Sabbaths before, in the dress of a bride. Why should he repine at the change in his lot. Once he made coffins!

now something to put into them. What mattered the name of the trade; since both filled up graves?

So reasoned our giant, and in time, he became as brave a young soldier as he had before been a steady mechanic. Nearer and nearer he came to the side and heart of his monarch, till at length he nanted him his squire; he should have said Saviour, for so he turned out. At the famous battle of Fehrbellin, the elector was mounted upon a snow white horse, a splendid mark for the Swiss, and many a bullet whizzed over and under him. The squire perceived it and under pretence that his master's horse was fractious under the heavy fire, persuaded him to exchange steeds. Alas, alas! Scarcely had the faithful domestic sprung upon the back of the noble white charger, ere a ball pierced his heart. Verily to the elector, it was life out of death.

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All natural results are spontaneous, The diamond sparkles without effort, and the flowers open impulsively beneath the summer rain. And true religion is a spontaneous thing, as natural as it is to weep, to love, or to rejoice. No stiff, cumbrous, artificial form can be substituted for it. The soul that possesses it breathes it out in good words and good deeds from a nat ural impulse. It rises to God in devotion, it flows out to man in kindness, as naturally as the dew-drop rises to the sun, or the river rushes to the sea. It acts not from mere interest or fear. It is seraphic exaltation of being, throbbing in harmony with the will of God, from which right action follows as a matter of course. As

The rebellion of atoms would be univer God does good because he is good, so sal anarchy.

does the truly religious soul.

THE RESURRECTION.

Is it Simultaneous or Individual?

NO. IV.

BY REV. A. G. LAURIE.

the party of the majority, they comfort themselves that it is in their favor, and how, when of the minority, how well satisfied soever of the truth of their own views, -they yet feel their want of it, and yearn for it, and by their lack of it are excited to frequent re-considerations of their position, to re-assure themselves that they are indeed in the right, notwithstanding the multitude of minds against them.

But when from questions of intellectual reasoning and debate, we come to those rather of perception and feeling than of thought, and when from articles of creeds, in whose defence or assault men are implicated by self-esteem and party spirit, we come to some quiet sentiment in men's bosoms underrunning their creeds, and perhaps, as in this case, running contrary to them, then the argument from the unanimity of a large number of minds, becomes one of very weighty force indeed.

Do the Scriptures distinctly assert the doctrine of a universal and simultaneous resurrection? A partial reply to this was made under the head of another inquiry. That was: When, immediately after death, or at some future date, in a general resurrection, shall we enter the life immortal? Our conclusion was, immediately after death. The bearing of this conclusion on the inquiry touching a general resurrection is evident. If we live, and live forever, immediately when the transient darkness of death has dispersed, we cannot of course rise from the dead at any subsequent period; we cannot take part in any general resurrection; nor can there, in that case, be any such event among the arrangements of the future. In answering the one inquiry of our double question, we do likewise solve the other. But let us turn back upon another consideration which, we think, materially strengthens our position in regard to the New Testament teaching on this topic. It is of considerable moment in satisfy-pear from the eyes of the tearful group ing us of the correctness of any opinion which we think we have deduced from the Scriptures, that large numbers of other minds have deduced from them the same opinion. We are quite aware of the danger of leaning too strongly on such a support. We do not forget that the Romanist points to the immense majority of Christendom, as endorsing the tenets of his church, and deems that majority an item of no small weight in his controversy with the Protestant; that the Trinitarian relies on the same consideration in his dispute with the Unitarian, and the Limitarian in his with the Universalist.

Now, what is your impression as to his then condition, when you are standing be side the body of some friend from which he has just escaped? Nay, what is your expectation regarding the first step into eternity which you yourself shall take, when, from your dying bed, you disap

about you? Is it that you sink into some long. dark slumber, in which you are to repose till the trumpet of the archangel shall awake you on some far-off future, resurrection morning? Or is it not, rather, with a very sure, though reverend confidence, that instantly you shall enter upon a state as conscious, and as full of life as this is?

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Well, we think we do not hazard much in averring, that this is the individual confidence of the immense majority of Christian hearts. Great diversities of opinion there are as to the conditions, whether painful or pleasurable, guilty or holy, in which each of us shall assume our immor

Yet though, as these instances evince, it is an argument which may be misappli-tality. But even among those who deem ed, and is but little reliable in questions of keen polemics where men's passions have been ranged angrily on opposite sides, that it is still an argument, and one of some strength, no student of human nature will deny, who reflects how naturally all men fall back upon it; how, when they are of

the deeds of this life, or to speak more truly, the temporary disposition of the soul at death, decisive of our eternal fate,. and moreover, who look forward to what they call a general judgment in the distance, there is yet, we opine, an almost unanimous coincidence in this, that good

or bad, happy or miserable after death, we shall begin at once to live again, and live forever. Exceptions there are, I know, but they are comparatively few.

Now this is no question of intellectual acumen and discussion, or where it has at times been made so, the dispute has had no effect in altering the convictions of the mass of Christian minds. It is too, less an article of creeds, than a quiet sentiment of the heart, which gleans it silently, almost unconsciously to itself, from the New Testament, without much heed to the sectarian formula which perhaps asserts, perhaps contradicts it. Now, we say that, on a topic of this kind, unanimity of opinion, unanimity of impression rather, as to what the doctrine of the Scriptures teaches, is of very great value to strengthen and encourage our own persuasion that they do teach an instant resumption of life after our escape from the body.

We are not unaware that it may be thought that this harmony of feeling is but a result of the innate and universal abhorrence of extinction; that we shrink from the thought of even a momentary oblivion, and that our desire easily blossoms into our belief. We wish to live again instantly, and so we persuade ourselves that we shall.

There is just enough of truth in this reflection to give it plausibility. We do so wish, and fain would believe it, no doubt. But that we therefore could, without the help of Scripture, is refuted by the case of Socrates, and thousands more, who have ardently longed, but who, without that help, have sorrowfully failed to believe. "It is time for us to depart," said he to his judges, as he left the tribunal which condemned him to death, "I to die, you to continue to live; but which of these is the better lot, is known only to the Divine Being." Listen by contrast to Paul. "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 2 Cor. 5: 1. And that the unanimity of our desire to wake again to instant being would be sufficient to produce such a unanimity of faith as does obtain among Christian men on this point, were the Scriptures either

opposed, or mute on the subject, is disproved to every one who, on another topic, where our desires are even more unanimous and stronger, has heard the expres sion from the lips of devout men, “O, I do wish I could believe as you Universalists do, that all will at last be saved; but the Bible will not suffer me." Be sure, if that were not very generally felt to endorse the heart's wish for life immediate, as well as life immortal, there would be just as great diversity of view on this, as on a hundred other matters on which Christian opinion is divided. And that it does, is just another of the many correspondences, convictive of its divinity, between the word of God written in the book, and the word of God written in the heart. The one writing, that within us, reads, "I would not only live alway, but I would never cease to live." And the other, in consenting reply, "Thou never shalt; to die is gain; absence from the body, is presence with the Lord." And so plainly does it so speak, that almost all who desery in their hearts the wish, find and understand in the Book, the promise and assurance which crowns the wish. And that they do, that so many do, is, as we have said, a consideration of no mean force, in convincing us of the correctness of our own impression that we do see such a promise there.

Secondly, on this point, and it is a very noteworthy consideration in evidence of the power with which the Scriptures impress us with the persuasion of an immediate resumption of existence at death-the separate passages in which they avowedly teach us this truth are few and unconspicuous. Yet, it is the inference which is most naturally taken up from them by the mind of almost every ordinary reader, which he bears away with him from their perusal, and carries about with him daily, in a firm assurance that the close of his mortal, is the beginning of his immortal being. And again, on the other hand, there are passages, which, if not so numerous, are certainly much more obtru sive, commanding the eye, and arresting the thought, and rousing the fancy into the highest realm of the sublime, which, in terms of richest rhetoric, depict to us a

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general and simultaneous resurrection of mankind, for whose arrival- if we read these passages literally it would seem that we must lie in the grave meanwhile, and wait perhaps for ages. Now what we would note, is this: that despite these descriptions, and their apparent meaning, and their effect upon while reading them, they disturb only for a short while our ordinary impressions, and that speedily we subside into our customary conviction, our conviction, so steadfast and uniform, that it seems an instinct, that once dead, we are forever alive. And the fact that this feeling rules and holds us, notwithstanding our reverential confidence in the passages which seem to contravene it, and that in men of strong faith it is just as firm an expectancy of their spiritual thought, as it is of their earthly that the sun of to-morrow will spring directly out of the darkness of to-night, is surely very weighty proof of the force with which the general tone of Scripture lodges it within us.

When such men read xv. of 1st Cor., or the last paragraph of iv. of 1st Thess., they do so with devout deference for the truth of these chapters. That truth appears to be, the doctrine of a future, general resurrection, and, as a consequence, an intermediate abeyance of the life of individual souls. So most of them, perhaps, understand it. Well, what permanent effect has this impression on their expectation of an instant re-admission into conscious being, when the shadow of death passes, and eternity widens before them? None! They are momentarily puzzled, perhaps, to reconcile it with their usual style of thought. But they rise from their reading, their perplexity subsides, they have gathered from the apostle's words just what he designed they should, an additional confirmation of their assurance of immortality. Bat in reference to what he seems to teach of a previous sleep in death ere they enter upon it, ask one of them, "When you die, my brother, where do you expect to be!" And the substance, perhaps the very words of another verse of Paul's spring to his lips, "to die is gain, to depart is to be with Christ."

And they are right in so cleaving to a

truth everywhere insinuated throughout the New Testament, even though apparently opposed by two signal but highly figurative and scenical representations which seem to cumber and embarrass it.

Again: Christ lived no earthly life after he rose from the dead. He was a denizen then of eternity, though at intervals" he showed himself," "he appeared," such are the expressions,-to the dwellers in time. From his first disclosure of himself to the Magdalene till his as cension at Bethany, his interviews with his disciples are no longer of the character of his mortal intercourse. Not as of old the meetings of daily life, they are manifestations, apparitions. So they felt, so we feel. We may not discern and recognize it, but we feel it. There is the air of the unseen about him, and a coming forth from its secresies, as we see him joining himself suddenly to the two going to Em

maus,

whose eyes are holden that they do not know him." It is no longer an earthly Jesus who comes silently among the twelve in the shut room on the evening of the first day of his recovered immortality. And so in every one of his recorded visits to them, he glides out upon them from the parting air. The form is famil iar, but orly in appearance earthly; in texture and substance heavenly, spiritual body, the glorious body.*

Mark xvi. 9.

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* In confirmation of this view, that Christ's ritions, ky things, as the expressive Scottish appearances after his resurrection were appawords it, the moon kythes, when she comes out and shows herself from behind a cloud-vide Magdalene." And 12th verse; "He appeared first to Mary "After that, he appeared in another form unto two of Luke xxiv. 31. "He vanished out of them." their sight. John xx. 19. "Came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst of them." John xxi. 1. "Jesus showed himself again to the disciples;" and all the ghost-like narrative that follows, to the 8th verse.

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And that his aspect was different, more aweinspiring, vide, that last passage, especially 7th verse. John whispers to Peter, It is the Lord." Then in the 12th verse: "And none of the disciples durst ask him, who art thou, knowing that it was the Lord."

They felt that it was he, yet something strange about him repressed them.

Matt.

xxviii. 9. "Jesus met them [the women] saying, All, hail! and they came, and held him by the feet, and worshipped. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid.

And 16th verse. "Then when they [the elev

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