X. XI. PROVIDENCE. MORAL IDEAL. IMMORTALITY. THE EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE. THE SOUL OF GOD IN EVIL. XII. THE SOUL OF TRUTH IN ERROR. One Volume, 12mo, cloth, $1.50. Sent free, by mail, er receipt of price. DAVID G. FRANCIS, Publisher 17 Astor Place, New York. "Mr. Frothingham is a thoroughly trained scholar JAMES MCGEE, 95 Bleecker St., N. Y. FLOWERS AND GRAVES. No one thing indicates more plainly the change that passing over the mind of our people than the assoation of flowers with graves. People of middle age n recollect the time when all the associations with eath were gloomy, if not ghastly. Thoughts were iligently turned to blackness, decay and coldness; he shroud, the narrow house, the dust, the worm, the ineral occasion was throughout melancholy; the oom was darkened; the guests were heavily draped a mourning; the words of sermon and prayer were uggestive of fear; death was spoken of as an awful lispensation-a doom, a blight, a token of God's dis-. leasure; an odor as if the charnel house filled the air. Now all that is changed. Rarely is there a funeral undecorated with flowers-costly flowers where the dead are rich, simple field flowers when they are poor. The coffin has become a casket of handsome wood, decorated with satin and silver, and upon it are laid orange blossoms and violets, as the case may be, loosely strewn or tied in bunches, or made into emblematic forms of cross or crown, 4 anchor or harp, making the sweetest things in nature convey the sweetest lessons of faith. At first flowers were laid on the graves of children and young girls: but now they are always brought for the middle aged, the old men as well as women. No distinction is recognized of career or disposition, of fortune o fate. The tribute to death is impartial. The usag. is not confined to the believers in any particular creed, to the professors of a liberal theology, or the disciples of a sentimental faith. It is universal. It defies the traditions of puritan piety. It graces the poor tenement of clay in which an anguished soa has lodged as pleasantly as the dust that has enshrined a hopeful spirit. The flowers creep even in churches on these sad occasions. They cover altars: they fill chancels, invading the holy of holies with their bloom and fragrance, and preaching their due trine of sweetness where the gospel of a very different atonement is proclaimed. A usage like this must be accounted for. There is a sentiment, and perhaps something deeper behind it. In many cases, no doubt, the flowers are scattered by thoughtless though kind hands, that merely wish to cover up repulsive things for a few moments. But & practice so universal could not have originated in so shallow a motive as that. Of all who observe it but a small number comparatively are so light minded or 5 > superficial in feeling as to forget, or imagine they ould make others forget, by a thin layer of perishole leaves, anything awful like death, if death were ally the awful thing it was reputed to be. The custom referred to rather implies a change of entiment towards nature, which can proceed only 'om a profounder change in our mental view. It is tacit admission that death is an ordinance of nature, nd as such, beautiful in its way and not hideous. 'hat death is an ordinance of nature has indeed lways been admitted, but that, as an ordinance of ature, it had any beauty has always been denied. or nature itself, by theologians and religious people, as been regarded as the reverse side of beauty, a dark nd fatal power that held mankind in bondage. Nature has been a name for the dumb, unconscious, lestructive elements of the world; its prince the vil one; its law a law of death; a thing to which ife must be supernaturally imparted. The natural Jody was the deathly, the mortal body; the natural man was the unregenerated man; the natural heart, the wicked heart; the natural reason, the carnal reason; the natural life was the ungodly life. It has been the business of religion to make war on nature and the victory over death is reckoned a triumph over nature's most formidable champion. The resurrection from the dead was resurrection from the bondage 6 of sin as well. Death was the offspring of sin. While this view of nature prevailed no use was made of flowers except as emblems of perishableness. Their loveliness only added a touch of sadness to the world they adorned by reminding men that the fairest things were the most evanescent. They were emblems and teachers of death." The grass withereth, the flower fadeth." "Like a flower of the field, so he flourisheth, for the wind passes over it and it is gone. and the place thereof shall know it no more." But this view of nature has been succeeded by another. He is now regarded, not as a power of evil and corruption, but as a power of life and beneficence. Physiology teaches us to think of nature as exemplifying the processes of growth, that is as a living thing. Natural science presents her as a product of divine intelligence, a manifestation of perfect order, the grandest conceivable illustration of harmonious arrangement. The physician leaves his talismans and charms and studies the healing pro perties of nature. Literature owes its freshness to its faith in nature. Poetry sings the praise of nature. Philosophy tries to catch the method of nature. Science lives and moves and has its being in nature. Art, in the comparatively modern field of landscape painting, displays the wonderful beauty of natural objects, in their infinite combinations. A passion for |