PREFACE.

This volume consists mainly of Voices from ancient days, and from the lives of faithful and sainted men-especially those recorded in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. They overcame through faith, and entered into their rest. The records of their biographies remain for our study and profit. Their acts, and sufferings, and words of consolation, are still reverberating in the church of Christ.

It is written of a celebrated French regiment, that they so loved their commanding officer while at their head, and so venerated his memory after he had fallen in battle, that they required his name to be retained on the regimental roll, and called with the names of the living every day; on the name of the dead warrior being called, a living soldier answered for him, "Dead upon the field." The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews is the roll-call of the illustrious and the sainted dead, and each of their names, as it is enunciated, should stir our hearts as a trumpet sound.

I wish I could have dwelt on every heroic martyr and patient

saint whose name is inscribed in this holy calendar.

But,

perhaps, by the blessing of God, the few I have considered may

" remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time.”

The study of such records is the real communion of saints. The sacred page is the only pure picture gallery-apostolic portraits are alone admissible into our churches.

CHAPTER I.

THE SPEAKING DEAD.

"Thus though oft depressed and lonely,

All my fears are laid aside,

If I but remember only

Such as these have lived and died.'

"Abel being dead yet speaketh."-IIEBREWS 11: 4.

ABEL "being dead yet speaketh;" that is, Abel, removed in his bodily presence, yet through several channels, or in some family or society, speaks and acts, and influences those who now live. The common and the popular notion is, that death is the end of man as far as this world is concerned; that the grave which conceals the bulk of man's form covers and keeps within its chambers all man's influence; and that the instant he has ceased to breathe on earth, he has ceased to act. It is not so; this is a popular mistake.

It is true of Cain, and of Abel, and of every man, that being dead they yet speak. We die, but leave an influence behind us that survives; the echoes of our words are evermore repeated, and reflected along the ages. A man has two immortalities. One immortality he leaves behind him, and it walks the earth and still represents him. Another immortality he carries with him to a loftier sphere, the presence and the glory of God.

If this be so, it may be asked, what are the media through which man thus acts upon those that come after him? It is