THE

FUTURE LIFE.

C. M. 661.

WATTS. A Prospect of Heaven. i By glimmering hopes and gloomy fears

We trace the sacred road; Through dismal deeps and dangerous snares

We make our way to God.

2 Long nights and darkness dwell below,

With scarce a twinkling ray;
But the bright world to which we go

Is everlasting day.
See the kind angels at the gates,

Inviting us to come;
There Jesus, the Forerunner, waits,

To welcome travellers home.

4 There, on a green and flowery mount,

Our weary souls shall sit,
And with transporting joys recount

The labors of our feet.

i Let faith arise, and climb the hills,

And from afar descry
How distant are his chariot-wheels,

And tell how fast they fly.
2 Lo, I behold the scattering shades;

The dawn of heaven appears;
The sweet, immortal morning spreads

Its blushes round the spheres.
I see the Lord of glory come,

And Aaming guards around; 'The skies divide to make him room,

The trumpet shakes the ground. 4 I hear the voice, “ Ye dead, arise!”

And lo! the graves obey, And waking saints, with joyful eyes,

Salute the expected day.

1 There is a land of pure delight,

Where saints immortal reign; Infinite day excludes the night,

And pleasures banish pain. 2 There, everlasting spring abides,

And never-withering flowers ; Death, like a narrow sea, divides

This heavenly land from ours.

3 Sweet fields, beyond the swelling flood,

Stand dressed in living green; So to the Jews old Canaan stood,

While Jordan rolled between.
4 But timorous mortals start and shrink

To cross this narrow sea,
And linger, shivering on the brink,

And fear to launch away.
5 O could we make our doubts remove,

Those gloomy doubts that rise, And see the Canaan that we love, With unbeclouded

eyes, – 6 Could we but climb where Moses stood,

And view the landscape o'er, Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood,

Should fright us from the shore.

1

2

S. M.

664. MONTGOMERY.

For ever with the Lord.
For ever with the Lord!

So, Father, let it be;
Life from the dead is in that word,

'T is immortality.
Here in the body pent,

Absent from thee I roam;
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent

A day's march nearer home.
3 My Father's house on high!

Home of my soul, how near
At times to faith's foreseeing eye

Thy golden gates appear!

5

I hear at morn and even,

At noon and midnight hour,
The choral harmonies of heaven

Earth's Babel-tongues o'erpower.
And then I feel, that he,

Remembered or forgot,
The Lord, is never far from me,
Though I perceive him not.
C. M. 665.

MRS. STEELE. Looking at Things unseen. 1 Why should the world's alluring toys

Detain our hearts and eyes,
Regardless of immortal joys,

And strangers to the skies? . These transient scenes will soon decay,

They fade upon the sight;
And quickly will their brighter day

Be lost in endless night.
3 O could our thoughts and wishes fly

Above these gloomy shades,
To those bright worlds beyond the sky

Which sorrow ne'er invades!
There joys, unseen by mortal eyes,

Or reason's feeble ray,
In ever-blooming prospect rise,

Unconscious of decay.
5 Lord, send a beam of light divine

To guide our upward aim;
With one reviving ray of thine

Our languid hearts inflame.

L. M.

666.

PEABODY.

Heaven.

i When all the hours of life are past,

And death's dark shadow falls at last,
It is not sleep, it is not rest,

’T is glory opening to the blest.
2 Their mighty Master bids them rise

To radiant mansions in the skies,
Where each shall wear a robe of light,

Like his, divinely fair and bright.
3 Angels shall now unite their prayers

With those of spirits blest as theirs ;
And light shall gild their heavenly crown,

From suns that never more go down. 4 No storms shall ride the troubled air,

No sounds of passion enter there;
But all be peaceful as the sigh

Of evening gales that breathe and die. 5 There, parted friends again shall meet,

In union holy, calm, and sweet;
And earthly sorrow, fear, and pain
Shall never reach their hearts again.
S. H. M.
667.

MONTGOMERY. Friends separated by Death. | Friend after friend departs:

Who hath not lost a friend ? There is no union here of hearts

That finds not here an end : Were this frail world our final rest, Living or dying, none were blest.