So, when any comes up to this inexorable gate, the curtain being drawn aside so momentarily, the pilgrim passes in* with such swift and rapid feet, that we who stand without, though we may accompany our beloved even to the very gate and follow them to the threshold of the supernatural life, yet fail even to obtain the most transitory glimpse of the sweet and hidden life within. Ah, my God! the agony of almost hearing-so intent is our listening-the inaudible footsteps of the soul in its passing; then to feel how we are left alone while they are gone into the unknown, who had perhaps never passed a night away from the shelter of our love! Yet we are sentenced to remain, and so we stand desolately without in the gloomy night of our sorrow, like the Magdalene weeping at the sepulchre. This secrecy is to rebuke all curious thoughts till our own solemn summons is put into our hand to break its black seals, when we, too, must pass within the gate and discover its awful secrets, and, the pity of Jesus grant! the hidden treasures of its peace and love with those dear presences of our dead, who will greet us with the old familiar smile. But henceforth, as we turn away, and the retreating footsteps of the passing soul have died into the silence, the last faint step leaving us to the realisation of our utter loss, we belong wholly to sorrow. It has drawn us out of the light into the long unbroken defile, where our whole way must henceforth lie through the darkness to the everlasting light. That one moment of last separation stands for ever between us and the past. How full and throbbing it is grown, that one small beat of the pulse of time, which stayed all the rich flowings of our life, when it froze the warm fountains of a life dearer to us

* Death is called, in one of the exquisite metrical homilies of the Syrian, Mar Jacob (this is on Habib the Martyr), 'The ample entrance to God.' This homily, and that on the martyrs, Guria and Shamuna, are full of indescribable pathos and beauty.

infinitely than our own! That one tiny movement of time has cast over our hearts its dark shadow, as if it stood, a gigantic shape of spectral gloom, warning us from all hope of return to the sunny lands of the blessed past which we have now left for ever. We go forth into the darkened landscape of our lonely life to pursue our future way, unenlightened by the sweet counsel and sympathy of the days. that are gone, now alone,—yes, for ever alone!

Thus, while we wait with passionate longings for the great Reunion, these sobbing words are (how truly!) felt, though chastened and transfigured into hope, till we almost smile through our tears :

'Down below, the wild November whistling

Through the beech's dome of burning red,
And the Autumn sprinkling penitential
Dust and ashes on the chestnut's head.

'Down below, the church to whose poor window
Glory by the autumnal trees is lent,
And a knot of worshippers in mourning,
Missing some one at the Sacrament.

'And the new-made grave within the churchyard,
And the white cap on that young face pale,

And the watcher, ever as it dusketh,

Rocking to and fro with that long wail.

'O the sobbing of the winds of Autumn,
And the stormy streak of sunset gold,
And the poor heart, thinking in the churchyard,
"Night is coming and the grave is cold."
'O the pale and plashed and soddened roses,
And the desolate heart that grave above,
And the white cap, shaking as it darkens
Round that shrine of memory and love!

"O the rest for ever, and the rapture,

And the hand that wipes the tears away,
And the golden homes beyond the sunset,
And the hope that watches o'er the clay !'*
* Bishop Alexander, 'Above and Below.'

See, poor mourner, with the heart just broken, the veil has fallen, the gate has closed. No feet but those of the dying may pass that mystic threshold; and yet, surely, grief and love may be allowed to rest there for a little space, and for one brief week the hurrying feet of life may be commanded to pause; at least, until the solemn feet of the bearers have carried our dead to their last home. Oh, it is indeed a heart-bruising sound, unlike any other in the world, that sad, burdened tread upon the stairs and through the door, where they who are so slowly carried out were used to go out or come in so often with our too thoughtless farewell or greeting! With what intense pathos are those old, careless words invested now! Yet surely our sad thoughts may be suffered unchidden to sit as watchers at the gate until that carrying forth, that we may breathe its atmosphere of supernatural reality and listen to its voices, too silent for any but the heart to hear, in which the confused voices of earth have died away in the hush and silence of a great bereavement. Then the voices of the gate will speak of peace and of the blessed eternity that is with God. Only let us not stay too long. One hour of consecrated sorrow, as we sit by that solemn gate, can people a whole life with the angel-like forms of heart-sympathy. It can train and teach, as years of unreal, morbid sentiment cannot, in the tender and exquisite art of Christian consolation. It can fill the soul, made so vacant, with holiest thoughts of pity and love, and can make us return enriched with the sweet fruits of our own bitter sowing in the rain of tears and sorrow, to be given, when ripened and mellowed in the sunshine of Christ's comfort, to other mourners. the virtue of one hour at that gate, if only some sounds and gleams of the eternal life reach our souls, watching on this the further side! Blessed hopes, playing like the fingers of an unseen hand upon the broken strings of our hearts, will

Oh

lend their tones, and will mingle their low, tender music with our chastened but comforted life, till the sorrowful shall say of us: 'Their face shone in my darkness, when they came to me, with the look of those who have seen the light of God, where their own dead are gone; and the music of their voice, when they spoke to me, sounded so gently, and as though a harmony of true human sorrow was blending evermore with the deep chords of an eternal hope.' Is it not worth sitting through some sad, desolate hours at that gate if we may return with such a mission from God the Comforter? If we come back from that farewell alone, One will yet return with us, who will give our hearts a brave unselfishness to make our pain always a hidden pain, infinitely too sacred to be displayed in the vulgar attitudes and affectations of a theatrical mourning. Our sorrow will be in its suffering more and more all our own; to others it will be only a grace of sweetness, and tenderness, and love, that has stolen by a secret way unknown to them into all our after-life.

But let us timidly and reverently follow, in the dim procession of the dead, the souls, which are ceaselessly watched by the great pathetic Eyes of God, who calls to them to come. The gate, swinging instantly back upon noiseless hinges, is always closing for ever upon the shadowy train. Our breaking hearts may, in the hour of bereavement and agony, be struggling to hold back our loved ones, for whom God has sent by a command that can suffer neither delay nor any denial. If we would vainly grasp at the white raiment of the departing soul, fluttering so loosely in the cool breath of the evening-hours of death, that we may detain it in our love, it will still find a way to pass from us to God. Its face, half-glorified, is already turned from us to Him, and it is saying in its ecstasy of love,—yes, even to us, who are, we know, dearer to it than its own life,—for the Beauty of God and the Eternal Light are holding out their arms to

embrace it: 'Let me go, for the Day breaketh.'

Then our dying just smiled a strangely sweet and satisfied smile, and so they went from us to God. We can only sob out, in some such wailing words as these, our sorrow :

'It is hard

To stay behind alone. The morn or eve shall bring
No word of thee to me; and days and nights

Shall make one empty night.'*

Then we must wearily retrace our steps to the haunts of mortal men, and how blankly the white, dusty highways of life stare at us, and how cruelly unsympathetic look the faces of the crowds that throng them, as we descend to the rude ways of common existence! Yet those interminable miles, as they seem to us in the impatience of our new sorrow, may be transfigured by faith into a long life of gentle service to the many whom we meet struggling onwards with as weary a burden, and whose sad faces seem to solicit our gentlest compassion. Are they not also those miles of uncompanioned wayfaring our own way to God, the one road which will lead us out of all solitudes and sadnesses at last, when we also go to rest with our lost ones in God's home? Yet we want-oh, we know not how much!-the old companionship. Every hour, each moment, needs them, and our hearts knock at the memories of what they were to us, buried deep in the inmost sanctuary of the soul's love; but not as the dead too often lie in a grave, forgotten and unvisited, for the feet of our constant longing have trodden to our sacred memories a well-worn path indeed. And yet, alas! our heart only fails and sinks at the hollow sounds of its own knocking, like one who knocks at the moss-grown door of a vault, or as when a child, returning after long years to the home of his childhood, only finds it all vacant and empty, greeting his passionate haste of love only with the blank stare of its unclosed windows and long-unopened door. * Ezekiel,' p. 19.