body, we should feel that one of the mysteries of death is solved.  Could we trace its flight into the air, could we watch its form as it disappeared among the clouds, or melted away in a distance greater than the eye can comprehend, we should not, perhaps, ask for a word to assure us respecting the state of the soul.  But there is no more perfect delineation of the appearances which death presents to us, than in the following inspired description:  “As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.”  We see the lying down, the fixedness of the posture, the utter disregard, in the cold remains, of every thing which passes before them; and these remains are like the channels of a river, or the flats of the sea, when the tide has utterly forsaken them.  The soul is like those vanished waters, as to any manifestation that it continues to exist.

We miss the departed from his accustomed places; we expect to meet him at certain hours of the day; those hours return, and he is not there; we start as we look upon his vacant place at the table, or around the evening lamp, or in the circle at prayers.  No tongue can describe that blank, that chasm, which is made by death in the family circle, or the variations in the tones of sorrow and desire with which those words are secretly repeated, day after day, and night after night:  “And where is he?”

* * * * *

Is there any assignable cause for the silence of the dead?

We cannot, with certainty, assign the reason for it, and we do not know why the dead are not suffered to reappear to us.  We can, nevertheless, see great wisdom and use in this silence, and in our perfect ignorance respecting their state.

It is the arrangement of divine Providence that faith, and not sight, shall influence our characters and conduct.—­It would be inconsistent with this great law if we should see or hear from the dead.

The object of God, in his dealings with us, is to exalt the Bible as our instructor.  If men were left to visions and voices, in which there is so much room for mistake and delusion, the confusion of human affairs would be indescribably dreadful.  Every man would have his vision, or his message, the proof, or the correctness, of which would necessarily be concealed from others, who might have contrary directions, or impressions; and human affairs would then be like a sea, in which many rivers ran across each other.