however lonely we may feel, wishing for some
word of remembrance and love; and though we visit the grave day by day,
and call on the name of the departed, and use every art of endearment to
pierce the veil between us,--there is the same determined, cold, lasting
silence. "To go down into silence" is a scriptural phrase for the state
of the dead.

Our feelings seek relief from those vague, uncertain thoughts respecting
the dead which we find occasioned by the gentle manner in which death
most frequently occurs. The breath is shorter and shorter, and finally
ceases, yet so imperceptibly, that, for a moment, it is uncertain
whether the last breath has expired. There is no visible trace of the
outgoing of the soul. Could we see the spirit leave the body, we should
feel that one of the mysteries of death is solved. Could we trace its
flight into the air, could we watch its form as it disappeared among
the clouds, or melted away in a distance greater than the eye can
comprehend, we should not, perhaps, ask for a word to assure us
respecting the state of the soul. But there is no more perfect
delineation of the appearances which death presents to us, than in the
following inspired description: "As the waters fail from the sea, and
the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not; till
the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their
sleep." We see the lying down, the fixedness of the posture, the utter
disregard, in the cold remains, of every thing which passes before them;
and these remains are like the channels of a river, or the flats of the
sea, when the tide has utterly forsaken them. The soul is like those
vanished waters, as to any manifestation that it continues to exist.

We miss the departed from his accustomed places; we expect to meet him
at certain hours of the day; those hours return, and he is not there;
we start as we look upon his vacant place at the table, or around the
evening lamp, or in the circle at prayers. No tongue can describe that
blank, that chasm, which is made by death in the family circle, or the
variations in the tones of sorrow and desire with which those words are
secretly repeated, day after day, and night after night: "And where is
he?"

* * * * *

Is there any assignable cause for the silence of the dead?

We cannot, with certainty, assign the reason for it, and we do not know
why the dead are not suffered to rea