FROM dearth to plenty, and from death to life
Is Nature's progress, when she lectures man
In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes
The grand transition, that there lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God.
The beauties of the wilderness are His

That makes so gay the solitary place,

Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms,
That cultivation glories in, are His.

He sets the bright procession on its way,

And marshals all the order of the year;

He marks the bounds, which Winter may not pass,
And blunts his pointed fury; in its case,
Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ,
Uninjured, with inimitable art;

And ere one flowery season fades and dies,
Designs the blooming wonders of the next.

COWPER'S Task.

CHAPTER XIV.

Depth of meaning in the word Type-Faith must take the ImpressionsThe Processes of Spring as Typifying the Resurrection of the Just— The Rising of all things, by God's Requisition of that which is Past. THERE is a meaning in the word TYPE, as applied to the tracing of analogies between Nature and the world of Spiritual Realities, far more profound than is ordinarily apprehended. It is a word for Faith to ponder upon and use. Types are things by which thoughts may be printed. The types are set, but the thoughts cannot be read, till the sheet of fair white paper is laid upon them and printed. The types are set, according to the meaning of the author; but it is the printed sheet alone that contains their impression, holds their meaning, and spreads it to the light, to the soul, to the world of thoughtful intelligence. Thus it may be said that Faith spreads the sheet that receives the impression, the meaning, of God's types in Nature; and then they are read, how plain, how universal, how radiant with Truth Divine!

All the processes of Nature are as God's stereotype plates, renewed incessantly, varied continually, possessing an inherent life; self-setting types, self-casting plates, by impermeating law, the Law of the Spirit of Life, acting in all Nature. It is the Spirit of Divine Intelligence, the Spirit of Living Wisdom, Creative Wisdom, speaking to Faith, in forms of life, silent, it

may be, to the ear, yet voiceful to the soul, and full of meaning. From thoughtful types thus arranged by Law in the earth's being, Faith takes the impressions, prints the pages, binds up the volume, reads it, loves it, as God's own revelation.

Thus are set the Types of Resurrection in the processes of Spring. It is not mere ingenious Fancy appending that grand meaning to Nature as an after thought; it is God himself, who hath thus set one thing over against another, and given us in Nature a mirror that reflects the firmament of Spiritual Truth. The well-known epitaph on himself, written by Dr. Franklin for his own grave-stone, many years previous to his death, was a curiously beautiful figure, drawn partly and purposely from things connected with the occupation of his life; but, beautiful as it is, the Scripture doctrine of the Resurrection is not in it, nor, in fact, any intimation of the resurrection of the body at all; but only a new and fairer life for the soul, the immortal work, divested of its earthly covering.

The Body
of

Benjamin Franklin,

Printer;

(Like the cover of an old book,

its contents torn out,

And stript of its lettering and gilding;)

lies here, food for worms.

Yet THE WORK ITSELF shall not be lost,

for it will (as he believed,) appear once more

in a new

And more beautiful edition,

Corrected and Amended

by

THE AUTHOR.

The Grecian Plato might have written this, had he too been a printer, or even a bookbinder. But the Types of Nature God hath set up to print a deeper meaning from than immortality merely. The idea of a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by the Author, sets one solemnly to thinking; for the corrections and emendations in the work itself must all be made by revealed and well-known processes here; which, if they be not passed through and perfected in our Divine Redeemer, then must the work be lost indeed there, its true value never known but by its loss.

But the processes of Spring, the impressions being fully taken by Faith, not only shadow forth a future life, but send us to our Redeemer as its assurance and its fountain. A village graveyard shows upon a neat and simple tomb-stone an affecting record of sweet virtues, by which the memory of the just is blessed, and then leaves the awakened mind to ponder upon these words engraven deep upon the marble: THAT WHICH THOU SOWEST IS NOT QUICKENED EXCEPT IT DIE. In a country grave-yard in England a stone may be seen bearing this question from Job on the top of it, IF A MAN DIE, SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN? and underneath, simply the answer by our blessed Lord, I AM the ResurRECTION AND THE LIFE. Not the resurrection merely, but the resurrection and the life; and it is as prophetic of the two together, that Nature sets her types, in the processes of vegetable life, for Faith's affirmations.

The seed dies, to rise again. The dying is itself not absolute death, but a process of passing and reviving life. In all seeds cast into the ground, it is only where life is uninterruptedly possessed and continued, that there is a rising again. If there is absolute death, a bare rotting, in which the principle of life

stops, nothing springs from it, nothing is ever seen or known of it again, as life. Therefore in the revivifying processes of Spring only the Resurrection of the Just is shadowed forth, is typified in Nature, and can be printed from its forms; only the resurrection of him, whosoever he be, that liveth and believeth in Jesus. There is really no resurrection in Nature, save only where Death is a dying into Life, the principle and power of Life never having been for one instant interrupted. If that principle dies, the seed abideth alone, and there is no resurrection. So then, it is only the resurrection of believers in Christ, of those in whom the life is hid with Christ in God, and holds on, permanent, perpetual; it is only their resurrection that is typified in Nature.

Accordingly, that is the only resurrection dwelt upon in the fifteenth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, with illustrations drawn by the Divine Inspiring Spirit from Nature. That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die, and that death itself takes place only because there is continued life; and so if there be not continued life in Christ, there can be no hea venly quickening, since it is only in Christ that any can be made alive. Nature herself thus teaches, when she predicts a resurrection, not only that it will be, but how and how only it can be, that is, by continued life. For the resurrection which Nature does predict, is a resurrection into new life and beauty, not into shame and everlasting contempt. The Types of the Resurrecsion of the wicked God hath not set in Nature, except as tares which in the harvest are to be gathered up and burned. There is indeed in nature bad seed as well as good seed, and there are weeds and poisonous plants as well as life-sustaining grain. But the consideration of this belongs rather to the harvest. It is not indeed excluded from the Types of Spring, but on the whole