"O, though oft depressed and lonely,

All my fears are laid aside,

If I but remember only

Such as these have lived and died!"

Mahomet still lives in his practical and disastrous influence in the East. Napoleon still is France, and France is still almost Napoleon. Martin Luther's dead dust sleeps at Wittenberg, but Martin Luther's accents still ring through the churches of Christendom. Shakspeare, Byron and Milton. all live in their influence, for good or for evil. The apostle from his chair, the minister from his pulpit, the martyr from his flame-shroud, the statesman from his cabinet, the soldier in the field, the sailor on the deck, who all have passed away to their graves, still live in the practical deeds that they did, in the lives they lived, and in the powerful lessons that they left behind them. In fact, the earth is a vast whispering gallery, and the centuries are but telegraphic wires which convey the thoughts of one age to another. The nineteenth century sits at one end of the electric telegraph, and the first century at the other, and the former hears transmitted to it lessons from the latter that mould and shape it for heaven, for happiness, or woe. A very able writer makes the remark, which I think is perfectly true, that nothing that is said is ever extinguished, that nothing that is done ever ceases its influence. It goes out from us, and is never arrested or put an end to. Every schoolboy knows that matter is infinitely divisible; that is, if I divide a thing in half, those halves can still be divided into other halves, and each of these again into other halves, and each of these into other halves, one-half divided into one-fourth, and one-fourth into one-eighth, and one-eighth into one-sixteenth, and one-sixteenth into one-thirtysecond, &c. &c.; and thus we may go on dividing infinitely, since what remains after the last division never can be so small that we cannot conceive it divisible still. What is true

of visible nature is no less true of the audible voice. The sound we utter, and the deed we do, are equally infinitely divisible, and neither cease. In the language of Professor Babbage, who has written most ably on this subject, "The air is one vast library, on whose pages are forever written all that man has ever said, or woman whispered." In other words, when I utter a word, its echo goes round and round the world, growing less ad infinitum, and will do so ceaselessly till the structure and constitution of the world has been altered and disorganized for ever and ever. The pebble that I drop into the sea will send out its undulations for ever and ever. The blow that I strike upon the earth will transmit its vibrations for ever and ever. The act I thought no eye followed, that deed which I fancied was done and annihilated forever, is each still sounding in successive vibrations and repetitions in the atmosphere, and throughout the earth; and at the judgment-seat God has but to make man's ear more sensitive, and his eye more susceptible, and all he said and did will come back to him, the good in sweet music, the evil in crashes and reverberations of woe and agony, that shall never, never cease. It is, surely, a very solemn fact, that everything we do never terminates. It is quite true, it terminates to us with our present organization at a certain point, because we can only hear a sound up to that point at which it becomes too faint for us to hear it; but it has not ceased, and may not be too faint for others to hear it; and, if our senses were more acute, we should be able to trace it still. But science can demonstrate with absolute precision that a blow once struck carries on its vibrations to the end; that a word once said is repeating itself in the air till the judgment-day; and Scripture leads us to infer that it will at that day meet us again, a memorial of the good or the evil we have done.

A similar law occurs in light. Everybody knows that, before I can see an object, a ray of light must leave that object

and fall upon my eye, and that the ray of light is simply a missionary from the object revealing it clearly to me. We well know that light travels two hundred thousand miles in a second. But, great as this velocity is, it is evident that light takes time to travel. In other words, the missionary beam from the distant star takes time to reach my eye. A ray of light takes four minutes in reaching me from the sun, so that we cannot see the sun till four minutes after he is actually above the horizon. And, if this be true, it is no less so of light reflected from this world to distant orbs. In other words, a ray of light must leave this world and reach the distant orbs before they can see the object from which it came. Now some stars are so distant that the rays of light from them take a thousand, four thousand, or even six thousand years in reaching us; and there is no doubt that there are some stars so distant that, though light travels two hundred thousand miles in a second, still the rays from them have not yet reached our world. Thus, light taking time to travel, we can conceive that the ray of light reflected from Adam and Eve in the midst of Paradise is now travelling upward into the infinite space of the universe, and that the inhabitants of some distant orb are at this moment, if their senses be acute enough, as we can conceive them to be, beholding Adam and Eve in the midst of Paradise. In a star, again, of the twelfth magnitude, which we can see with our telescopes, the inhabitants, if their senses be acute enough, may now see the cross erected on Calvary, and Jesus uttering the words, "It is finished." And, in nearer stars, the inhabitants may see Martin Luther at this moment burning the Pope's bull in Germany. If, then, we can conceive the senses of the inhabitants of distant worlds to be sufficiently acute, all that has transpired on earth from the beginning is seen by them, as the rays reflected from them travel upward and onward to their distant abodes. And if we can conceive that a glorified being has the power to travel

from star to star, we may imagine that he might go to one star and see Martin Luther just revealed, then to another and see Abraham, to another and see Paradise. Thus, the universe becomes a vast picture-gallery, successively showing its scenes to successive orbs; and what is done is thus never annihilated, but ever revealed to more and more distant lands, travelling through the universe, and representing itself to the minds that fill the orbs which God has created.

What a tremendous interest does this give to every act that we do! What a solemn thought, that everything now transacted upon earth is passing from the earth, and is visible to others; and that, when we are dead and gone, it will be still transmitted from orb to orb, till the whole universe knows what I was and what I did!

He

The same writer introduces another very striking thought illustrative of the same idea, derived from electricity. says, what indeed is very likely, that there is never a thought in the mind, nor an action in the body, that does not throw out currents of electricity. Nothing, therefore, seems more probable than that one man may yet know what another man's thoughts are. There is to me nothing more improbable in this than that one person at Dover and another in London should be able to converse together by means of electricity, or that houses and trees should be their own pictorial painters. Moreover, it is not at all impossible that our thoughts may be transmitted through electric currents by the medium of the nervous system, and record themselves to distant tenantry as our real and inmost thoughts, and thus all the universe may know not only what man is and what he is doing, but also what he thinks. The darkness hideth not from God; the night is as light about us. What we do is transacted on a stage of which all in the universe are spectators. What we say is transmitted in echoes that will never cease. are is influencing and acting on the rest of mankind.

What we

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tral we cannot be. Living we act, and dead we speak; and the whole universe is the mighty company forever looking, forever listening, and all nature the tablets forever recording the words, the deeds, the thoughts, the passions, of mankind.

Still, I admit that the main practical truth contained in the assertion of St. Paul is, that the influence we exert is conveyed to others that succeed us, that what we are will shape the character of those we leave behind. We cannot refuse to transmit an influence; this is not left in our power; but we may determine whether that influence shall be beneficial or the reverse. It is a thought worth remembering, "None of us liveth to himself; "others are affected by that life; "or dieth to himself; " others are interested in that death. Hearts will bleed, or hearts will bound, fifty years after this, from something we now say, or do, or are. What we now are is preparing victims for woe, or, through the grace of God, heirs for glory. What we now are and say and do is either communicating demon joy to the fiends, or angelic ecstasy to angels that are about the throne. Our queen's crown may moulder, but she who wore it will act upon the ages which are yet to come. That noble's coronet may be reft in pieces, but the wearer of it is now doing what will be reflected by thousands who will be made and moulded by him. Dignity, and rank, and riches, are all corruptible and worthless; but moral character has an immortality that no sword-point can destroy, that ever walks the world and leaves lasting influences behind.

Some men not only speak to audiences of thousands, but have the power of writing, and conveying their sentiments to tens of thousands. And if it be true that from what we live, and speak, and are, succeeding generations will be influenced, it is still more applicable to those who avail themselves of the power which printing gives them; for they influence not only cotemporaneous generations, but the remotest living