EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
53 
We now advert to perhaps a less congenial theme. True as 
beautiful is the remark, “ The veil which hides from our eyes 
the events of future years is a veil woven by the hand 
Mercy.” All is to us unknown ; still there exists no chance or 
peradventure. The dark shadow of death seems to cast 
increasing gloom every year around us. Our obituary con- 
tains the names of no less than twenty-three of our members 
who have been called hence during the past year, and some 
of them most unexpectedly. We begin almost to feel like 
those who have been left to travel alone, so many whom we 
once knew having departed. This, however, should create 
no despondency. There is a brighter and a better world 
beyond the tomb, else this were one not worth living in ; 
and yet it is in this that the possession of the better and the 
brighter world is to be ensured. Here is only our probationary 
state of existence. Let us then be up and doing, remem- 
bering we have to do with the decisive and living Future, 
not the dead Past. “ There is no work, nor device, nor 
knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave.” Death, the great 
victor, merges all petty victories into one great achievement, 
for all to him must yield at last. May it be ours, when the 
solemn and momentous period arrives, to pass calmly from 
this transitory state to one of abiding purity and bliss, where 
neither sin nor sorrow is, but where 
“ Unbounded goodness circles all.” 
And may we not be allowed, in closing this address, to 
add our expressions of heart-felt sorrow at the untimely loss 
of those who were so cruelly massacred during the Sepoy 
rebellion in India, which we hope is now happily quelled. 
Oh, war, war, what destruction hast thou wrought ! With 
one exception we knew them all. They had been our pupils. 
We felt an interest in their well-doing, and little thought 
that they would have been so suddenly cut off while yet in 
the prime of life, and in the midst of their career of useful- 
ness. How mysterious are the dispensations of Providence ! 
Quarles has said, “ If thou expect death as a friend, prepare 
to entertain it ; if thou expect death as an enemy, prepare to 
