we learn more and more, as we advance in years, how much we owe to mother.

The attachment for a mother is different from that which we have for a brother or sister. That may be exceedingly tender and pure. Indeed, there is nothing more pure in our relations than love for a sister. But it is formed in a different way. When the tie which binds us to her is severed, it cannot indeed be renewed; it makes a sad desolation in the soul; but it is not precisely the sorrow which we have when we "bow down heavily, mourning for a mother." We love a sister, for we began life together, under the same roof, under the fostering care of the same parents. We played together in childhood; we shared the same gentle amusements; we went to the same school; we had the same father to counsel and guide us; and had the same mother to teach us to pray, and to give us the parting kiss at night. We grew up equally beloved by our parents, and we have learned to love each other much by mutual acts of affection and kindness.

The attachment is different from those friendships which we form as we advance in life. Those may be dear, and they may be stronger than that which binds to a mother, but they are not the same. A man leaves father and mother and cleaves to his wife with an affection more tender and strong than that formed by any natural relation, but it is not the same. He forms strong friendships in life, like that which bound the heart of David and Jonathan, but such friendships did not begin as we entered on life, nor imbed themselves in the soft heart of infancy and childhood, nor are they cemented by so many acts of kindness.

The attachment to a mother is different from that which we form for our children. It is what we expect of them, rather than what we feel for them. We love them much-even as she did us. But it is a love for them as our children; as dependent on us; as helpless; as needing our care and counsel; as a part of ourselves; as those who we hope will do us honor when we are dead. These attachments which we form in after life, of nature and affection, are strong and tender; they may be more immediately tender than those which we bear for a parent; grief may be more poignant when they are sundered by death, and when we follow wife or child to the grave, but it has its own features, distinct from that when a venerable and much loved parent is conveyed to the tomb. As there was a peculiarity of attachment, so there will be a peculiarity of sorrow such as we are not to experience again.

II. I notice a second peculiarity of feature in this kind of bereavement. It is in the change which is produced in our ideas of home-the home of our childhood and youth. When she lived there, there was always a home-a place which in every situation of life we felt was such, and which we regarded as such.

In our childhood and youth, there was in that home where she was, one who always cared for us, and for all that appertained to us. There was one who we were sure would take an interest in everything that we took

an interest in, and whose ear we were certain would be open to listen to all our tales of childish success, or of childish trouble. We were sure that she would take the same interest in it which we did, and we expected confidently that whoever might be against us, she would be for us. We never had a doubt that she would listen to our tale of fright, of disappointment, of calamity; nor that she would feel just as we did about it. The matter might be in itself important, or unimportant; it might be dignified or undignified, yet we never doubted that she would regard it as important, and as sufficiently momentous to claim her attention. We might have felt that it was not grave enough to tell a father about; we might have doubted whether he would suspend his more weighty employments to interest himself in our affairs; but we never had such a doubt for a moment about a mother. No matter what her employments, or her cares, or what she might be interested in, we were sure that she would be interested in us, and that, in all our troubles, we should find her our friend. We had our difficulties in the little world of childhood. Bigger and older boys struck us, or laughed at us, or reviled us, or surpassed us in learning. in running, or in skill, and in that little world we might have found no sympathy, and there was no one there to whom we could unburden an aching heart. But we were sure that there was one who would sympathise with us, and who would be on our side. Our playmates derided us, and laughed at us because we said, in our simplicity, that we "would tell our mother." And yet it was philosophy deep and pure to do so-like the pure crystal spring that breaks out of the side of a hill in the uncultivated forest. It was what nature prompted to-for nature designed that she should know our troubles, and nature had formed for us such a friend there, that whoever was against us, we knew that she would be on our side; whoever wronged us, she would not; whoever exulted over us, she would not join in the exultation. You may say that this is childish philosophy. So it may be; and the nearer our philosophy comes back to simple nature as developed there, the nearer we shall be to truth. In our troubles we have always needed a friend who would sympathise with us, and to whom we might unburden all the sorrows of the soul. The disciples of John's Redeemer "came, and took up his murdered body, and buried it, and went and told Jesus." Math. xiv. 12. In him they had a friend-tender and delicate above all a mother's feelings -who they were sure would sympathise with their sorrows; and what was more natural than that they should go and tell him? So in the home of our childhood, it was dear to us as a home, for there was not a sorrow of our heart that we might not tell our mother.

Many of us-most of us who are advanced beyond the period of childhood-went out from that home to embark on the stormy sea of life. Of the feelings of a father, and of his interest in our welfare, we have never entertained a doubt, and our home was dear because ho was there; but there was a peculiarity in the feeling that it was the home of our mother. While she lived there, there was a place that we felt was home. There was one place where we would always be welcome; one place where we

would be met with a smile; one place where would be sure of a friend: The world might be indifferent to us. We might be unsuccessful in our studies or our business. The new friends which we supposed we had made, might prove to be false. The honor which we thought we deserved, might be withheld from us. We might be chagrined and mortified by seeing a rival outstrip us, and bear away the prize which we sought; but there was a place where no feelings of rivalry were found, and where those whom the world overlooked would be sure of a friendly greeting. Whether pale and wan by study, care, or sickness; or flushed with health and flattering success, we were sure that we should be welcome there. Though the world was cold towards us, yet there was one who always rejoiced in our success, and always was affected in our reverses-and there was a place to which we might go back from the storm which began to pelt us, where we might rest, and become encouraged and invigorated for a new conflict. So have I seen a bird in its first efforts to fly, leave its nest, and stretch its wings and go forth to the wide world. But the wind blew it back, and the rain began to fall, and the darkness of night began to draw on, and there was no shelter abroad, and it sought its way back to its nest, to take shelter beneath its mother's wings, and to be refreshed for the struggles of a new day; but then it flew away to think of its nest and its mother no more. But not thus did we leave our home when we bade adieu to it to go forth alone to the manly duties of life. Even amidst the storms that then beat upon us, and the disappointments that we met with, and the coldness of the world, we felt still that there was one there who sympathised in our troubles as well as rejoiced in our success, and that, whatever might be abroad, when we entered the door of her dwelling, we should be met with a smile. We expected that a mother, like the mother of Sisera, as she "looked out at her window" waiting for the coming of her son laden with the spoils of victory, would look out for our coming, and that our return would renew her joy and ours in our earlier days.

"Oh! in our sterner manhood, when no ray
Of earlier sunshine glimmers on our way;
When girt with sin, and sorrow, and the toil
Of cares, which tear the bosom that they soil;
Oh! if there be in retrospection's chain
One link that knits us with young dreams again,
One thought so sweet, we sacrcely dare to muse,
On all the hoarded raptures it reviews,
Which seems each instant, in its backward range,
The heart to soften, and its ties to change,

And every spring untouched for years, to move,
It is THE MEMORY OF A MOTHER'S LOVE!"

It makes a sad desolation when from such a place a mother is taken away-aud when, whatever may be the sorrows or the successes in life, she is to greet the returning son or daughter no more. The home of our child hood may be still lovely. The old family mansion; the green fields; the running stream; the moss-covered well; the trees; the lawn; the rose; the sweet-briar, may be there. Perchance, too, there may be an

aged father, with venerable locks, sitting in his loneliness, with everything to command respect and love, but she is not there. Her familiar voice is not heard. The mother has been borne forth to sleep by the side of her children who went before her, and the place is not what it was. There may be those whom we much love, but she is not there. We may have formed new relations in life-tender and strong as they can be; wo may have another home dear to us as was the home of our childhood, where there is all in affection, kindness and religion to make us happy, but that home is not what it was, and it will never be what it was again. It is loosening of one of the cords which bound us to earth-designed to prepare us for our eternal flight from everything dear here below, and to teach us that there is no place here that is to be our permanent home.

III. I notice a third thing in such an event which is found to convey a lesson to the soul such as we always feel in bereavement, but which, like the other things adverted to, has a peculiarity of its own. I refer to a class of emotions often not less painful, and of a much more admonitory character than those which I have adverted to, and which, such are our imperfections in all the relations of life, we are always destined to feel when a friend is removed by death. I mean the quickened recollection of our neglects, of our acts of unkindness, of our ingratitude, of our improper feelings in our intercourse with those whom we have lost.

What I now advert to is one of the most beautiful and benignant laws of our nature-one of the most delicate arrangements to bring our guilt to remembrance in order that we may exercise true repentance, and to prompt us to kindness and fidelity in the remaining relations of life.

This law of our nature, which cannot well be explained except on the supposition that there is a moral government, and that God designs that all our sins shall be brought to our remembrance, is this-that in the death of a friend we instinctively recall the wrongs that we may have done him; for some mysterious power seems to summon them up from the land of forgetfulness, and to cause them to pass in solemn procession before us. Things which we had forgotten; words which we long since uttered but which had passed from the memory; expressions of irritated feeling; unjust suspicions; jealousies; neglect of the respect or the courtesies due in that relation of life; a want of attention when the heart of the friend was sad; want of sympathy in his successes or reverses, all seem to revive as we stand around the open grave, and as the coffin of the friend descends there, they are quickened into life-as the dead man was by the bones of Elisha. How this is so, as a matter of moral administration, we may not be able to explain. Perhaps it is because, though conscious in the general that we had erred in that relation, we still hoped that the friend would somehow forgive us-but now he has gone to the grave, and now we can never ask him to pardon us. Perhaps it is that we look on him now as a sufferer-and pity his condition-and all his sources of sorrow seem summoned to aggravate his condition, and among others the wrongs that we have done arise to our view as a bitter in

gredient in his cup of woes. Perhaps it is that God meant so to make the conscience that it would not always slumber, and designed that once at least it should do its appropriate work.

This law of our natnre has been so beautifully described by one of our best American writers, that I can do nothing so well as to copy his words:"Oh the grave! the grave! It buries every error, covers every defect, extinguishes every resentment. From this peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down even upon the grave of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb that he ever should have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him? But the grave of those we loved-what a place for meditation! There it is that we call up in long review the whole history of the truth and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us, almost unheard in the daily course of intimacy; there it is we dwell upon the tenderness of the parting scene, the bed of death with all its stifled grief, its noiseless attendants, its most watchful assiduities-the last testimonies of expiring love, the feeble, fluttering, thrilling -oh how thrilling is the fluttering pulse-the last fond look of the glazing eye, turning upon us from the threshold of existence; the faint, faltering accent, struggling in death, to give one more assurance of affection. Oh, go to the grave of buried love, and there meditate. There settle the account with thy conscience of every past endearment unregarded of that departed being who never, never can be soothed by contrition. If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul, or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate arent-if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth -or if thou art a friend, and hast injured by thought, by word, or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee-if thou art a lover, and hast ever given one unmerited pang to the true heart that now lies cold beneath thy feet, then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action will come thronging back upon thy memory, and knock dolefully at thy soul; be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and repenting on the grave, and utter the unheard groan, and pour the unavailing tear, bitter because unheard and unavailing."

Who, I may add, ever saw an endeared friend die, and did not feel that there were things in his intercourse with him to regret, and for which he would now desire to ask forgiveness? Who ever saw a man die of whom he had said hard things, or thought hard things, who did not lament that he had given indulgence to such words and feelings? Who ever attended one to the grave-friend or foe, partner or rival, with whom he had been at variance, who did not now wish to have it all buried in oblivion? Who can carry his enmity to the grave? There, when a rival or a foe is laid "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," we lay our animosities aside. There we feel, that whatever may be true of him whom we commit to the tomb, there was much in us that was wrong. And there we regret every unkind word, feel pained at the remembrance of every un