Massachusetts Spy And Worcester Advertiser

Pastoral and Religious.
[From the Emporium.]

THE GRAVE YARD.

I had long been absent from my native place, and the desolating arrows of death had sped many a relative, many a friend, and many an acquaintance from the stage of mortality. The broad and ample burying ground, had many an added mound, and the grass grew green alike over the old and the young. I stood by its broken wall, and bethought me of the times that were past. I knew not where the bodies reposed of those who had gone away from the busy scenes in which we once mingled together—but I knew the most of them lay somewhere in that solemn enclosure; some in short, others in long, full-sized graves. I called to mind the countenances, the every tone of voice, and line of feature, I recollected: and then I thought how changed—how full of change was earthly dream. It was not the aged generally who had departed; a few of these had dropped like withered leaves it was true; but the gay green boughs had fallen—the young, the bright, the beautiful: the storm seemed to have been most destructive where its ravages were least expected.

The congregation had gathered, and I entered, a stranger unknown, into the sacred edifice, which my father had assisted in erecting, and in which my early Sabbaths had been spent. The preacher's subject was the uncertainty of life. 'The young man, he said, looked upon the gray-haired sires of the age, and thought death was afar off, but it was a delusive fancy; a dream baseless as the visions of night, which flit across the sleepless mind. Death, he said, is equally near you all. He made the supposition that all that gathered assembly should die then, and be entombed in one burial place—and asked what kind of a grave yard they would make? Just such a one as that you see without these walls! Just such a one as is seen every where! But supposing you should all live to be aged, he continued, and then die and be buried together—What kind of a grave yard would then be seen? Such a one as would have no similitude with any in the wide world?' It was a powerful illustration of the subject.

We seldom think, at parting, of the uncertainty of ever meeting in this world again. If young, we fancy ourselves licensed to live long; if old, we feel like veterans; we have escaped so often that the danger seems past. But communion with the grave yard—a perusal of the obituary notices collected in a newspaper; or a recurrence to the well remembered company of school fellows, with whom we sat out in the road to science, will teach us a proper and profitable lesson. Wisdom has a thousand pages scattered abroad in the universe, in either of which we may find a directory to guide us to her temple.