reflecting blame upon him, but 11.leo 11.re of the most touching, tender, 11.nd eympat.lictio character. The probability seems to be that, after the earnest, religious work of Josiah to the dat,e of the PR.Ssover, special and solemn celebration (in "tho eighteenth yeor of his reign," and twenty-seventh of his life), with its last effort to bring in the hapless :r:c~nant of I~rael also, and after the lapse of another period of some thirteen years, the <1omgs of which, on the part of Josiah, are nowhere recorded, he is to be permitted before the sad plot thickens, to be " taken away from the evil to come; " and as bi: life was by no means in the sere and yellow loaf, the method of bis departure shall be ordained mercifully-not one of sickness, or stricken plazue, or ignominious "accident " but in the honourable risk 1md challenge of battle. ucca.sion may be taken here io consider the min~led mysteries and mercies that mark the Divine methods of summon- ing men from this present life, the methods of him whose wisdom is unchallengeable, whose ways are so often a profound deep, but of whom this may ever be recorded as comforting certainty, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." The phenomenon before us is that of a good man and a good king, placed at a most remarkable juncture of histo1y ; one, indeed, without the possibility of an exact parallel, who has served his day and generation and his God with singular fidelity amid ciitumstances of singular difficulty. He is the last true king, and the short following of his descendants and his successors on the throne are not in any degree the inheritors of his virtues and goodness. He has made one more, one last protest for his God and against that idolatry of his nation which bas cankered to the very heart its religious and its national health. Such a. stand he has boldly and for e. year successfully made; hut he ha.s been told, and doubtless has seen, that all was too late, and that the tide could not be turned. He is but thirty-nine years of age. And the appearance is a.s of a man rushing on his fate. But there is no appearance of recklessness or of intemperateness. He does not sport nor gamble away his life; and if in any partial aspect it looks for a moment like a gratuitous hazarding, it cannot be said to come of any of the ordinary impulses in any such cases. It is not for self, for sense, for sin; not for the gratification of any of these; and, meantime, it is not plain for what it is! It is the parable of providence--a parable by no means unfamiliar to us; known, indeed, to many an age, many a. nation, many a family, and full of silent, deep, useful lesson and suggestion. It teacbes- L 'IHAT WHAT WE KNOW AS DEATH IS NOT EXTINCTION OF LIFE. Let alone whatever else, what it simply and by itself means is the merging of one cycle of existence in another; the removal of life from one school of knowledge to another; the shifting of it from one sphere of activity to another. All the living force and excellence and virtue of Josiah are not quenched, cannot be merely thrown away; and if in one sense broken in twain-though all the analogies of sense must here in this very respect fail- only in one sense. Such a death at such a time of present life, under such circum- stances, is one of the strongest moral persuasives-a source of moral conviction irresistible as to what death is, lL THE THL>;G CALLED DEATH, IN ITSELF, ASKS ABSOLUTELY MORE THAN ANY OTHER OF THE FACTS OF LIFE, THE THING CALLED FAITH. It is itself a fact of life-the last fact of the series known here. To be understood rightly, and to be used rightly, and to yield anything like its full fruit of advantage, it demands to be "mixed with faith" more than any preceding fact of life. Therefore it is that sometimes it actually gives birth to faith, sometimes greatly strengthens it, or, lastly, supposing it is absolutely wanting, condemns the forlorn mourner to utter darkness. Ill. THE METHODS OF DEATH OFTEN SERVE, EVEN BEYOND THE FACT ITSELF, TO SURPRISE, TO STARTLE INTO EXISTENCE A WONDER THAT WILL NOT BEST. That irrepressible and often agonized wonder assists to tear open the eye of flesh and sense, and operates to find deep within, or deep behind, the dormant but now struggling germ of other and more real vision. Sorrow, grief, and wonder are three of the greatest moral forces of our nature, and their agonized unanswered questions avail to sound some of the deeper depthB of that nature. The mystery of death is one thing, but the mysteries of the methods of death-the victims of death, the apparently capricious or arbitrary action of death in those taken--of youth and excellence and usefulness, in the height of their service to the world, and where heitds and hearts a.re, in consequence, literally mowed down in widest sweep and circles-are other things. It is, indeed, en. xxxv. 1-27.] THE SECOND BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. 431
eomoUmes not impossible to imagine the gain to those who go; but what a wrecked econo for all that is left behind-with work that must be abandoned, schemes that must ~e abortive, hopes that must bo do.shed to the ground-a. widcRpread field of desolation and devastation I For the whole scone there is one refuge. It is one which postulates, for its highest safety and adequacy, not merely the existence and presence of faith, but faith of overcoming and dominant quality. Wanting this, which so uniformly is wanting, it may yet be that faith learns life, and lifts itself to bud and to begin to unfold its buds. IV. TnoUGll DEATH 18 SUOH A VIGOROUS AND RELENTLESS BIDDER FOB FAITH, BOTH IN ITSELF AND IN ITS CIRCUMBTANOE, YET IT DOES ALSO INFER SOME VERY CERTAIN PRESENT UtlE AND SIONIFIOANOE, In every case, for instance, of deep sorrow and sincere expression of it in "lamentation," what (comparatively speaking) healthy action of living hearts is betokened, and what a pure tribute of unharmful and direct honour is rendered to the vanished goodness! Upon this ancient sorrow, so far removed from ourselves, of "all Judah and Jerusalem . . . and of Jeremiah . . . and of all the singing men and the singing women "-so that they made "an ordinance of it in Israel," and recorded the words of their lamentation in their historical writings-with what pathetic interest we nevertheless look back ! And we wish there were no sadder end to the history of Judah and her kings impending, no bitterer tears to flow, no anguished cries to be heard, no shame to be bowed beneath! So the death of Josiah, and his place after death yet on earth, in memory, in heart, and in song, are fraught with no little interest, apart from faith's higher action, and are charged incentives to zeal, devotion, pure religion, and sensitiveness of conscience even for ourselves.