Questions and doubts are heard no more; Let Christ and joy be all our theme; His Spirit seals His Gospel sure, To every soul that trusts in Him. Learning and wit may cease their strife, When miracles with glory shine; The Voice that calls the dead to life Must be almighty and Divine. What faith in the _Saviour’s glorious resurrection and second advent_!— With joy we tell this scoffing age, He that was dead hath left His tomb; He lives above their utmost rage, And we are waiting till He come. _Sabbath songs_, songs for the social service at the close of the day, songs for every variety of Christian ordinance, songs especially for the Lord’s Supper, songs of grief as the soul realises the death of the Redeemer, songs of rapture as the salvation becomes apprehensible— Salvation! O the joyful sound! Or— Plunged in a gulf of dark despair. The first _Elegies_ in our language are among Watts’ hymns. When early manhood has been smitten down in its green prime, how finely swells aloft that grand elegy with its triumphant close, the paraphrase of the text, “He weakened my strength in the way. He shortened my days:” It is the Lord our Saviour’s hand Weakens our strength amidst the race: Disease and death at His command Arrest us and cut short our days. Spare us, O Lord, aloud we pray, Nor let our sun go down at noon; Thy years are one eternal day, And must Thy children die so soon? Yet in the midst of death and grief, This thought our sorrow shall assuage, “Our Father and our Saviour live; Christ is the same through every age.” Before Thy face Thy church shall live, And on Thy throne Thy children reign: This dying world shall they survive, And the dead saints be raised again. And when some form more than ordinarily venerable or beautiful, holy or beloved, has been lowered into its resting-place, while they laid wreaths of camellias and evergreens on the coffin, uprose that wonderful elegy: Hear what the Voice from heaven proclaims For all the pious dead! Sweet is the savour of their names, And soft their sleeping bed. And how often, in similar circumstances, that other sweet requiem: Why do we mourn departing friends? Amidst trembling prayers, in the darkened room, in the presence of some sweet shrouded and coffined form, the memory of some soft sealed face and folded hands, and spirit for ever at rest, has rose the hymn into pensive rapture: Are we not tending upward too, As fast as time can move? Nor would we wish the hours more slow To keep us from our love. Contrasting the evanescence of man, not merely with the eternity of God, but with the eternity of Christ, and the promised prevalence of His salvation everywhere, who has not seen large meetings leap into hearty fervour at the announcement of that noble prophecy: