Work for the Dead

7 12 1MPR0 VEMENT ERA.

carriage team, my watch from my pocket, and commenced physical labor again to support my family. At length the panic ceased, and its evil effects wore gradually away from the state. I rented my old homestead, and after a time exchanged it again, this making the fifth time. Part of the purchase money was left as a mortgage, and interest being so high (fifteen per cent) it was never completely paid for.

(to be continued).

WORK FOR THE DEAD. (For the Improvement Era.)

BY HENRY E. HORNE, OLD CASTLE, LEADVILLE, N. S. W., AUSTRALIA.

Imprisoned in that spirit land, Where joy is not eternally, There waits a sad, repentant band Beseeching us to set them free; For Christ and saints have pierced their gloom, And sent to them deliverance, And we on earth may ease their doom By God's vicarious ordinance!

Our God, whose mercy will not tire, While yet a spirit can be saved, Bids every suffring soul aspire, In that dominion dark, enslaved. He only asks that we shall take The captives' burden as our own, And as Christ suffered for our sake, So partly for them we atone.

WORK FOR THE DEAD. 773

Let us not, then, pass unheeded by, Forgetting the divine decree, Nor dare, with hardened hearts, deny "Our brothers' keepers that we be;" Lest, when our earthly race be run, And we would fain receive our crown, These spirits sad we might have won For Jesus Christ, shall on us frown.

Within the pure baptismal flood, Let us, for these poor souls be laved, Who, by our labor and the blood Of Jesus, can alone be saved. Beneath the water let us sink, An emblem of the death he died, To rescue spirits, from the brink Infernal, for the Crucified.

Oh, let us labor in their stead, And glory in vicarious deed; For guardian angels round our head May be those happy spirits freed. Their "work" shall fill our lives with song And joy and light for evermore; And, first among the ransomed throng, They'll welcome us to heaven's shore.