The Voices of The Dead...

       The world is filled with the voices of the dead. They speak not from the public records of the great world only, but from the private history of our own experience. They speak to us in a thousand remembrances, in a thousand incidents, events, associations. They speak to us, not only from their silent graves, but from the throng of life. Though they are invisible, yet life is filled with their presence. They are with us, by the silent fireside and in the secluded chamber: they are with us in the paths of society, and in the crowded assembly of men. They speak to us from the lonely way-side, and they speak to us, from the venerable walls that echo to the steps of a multitude, and to the voice of prayer. Go where we will, the dead are with us. We live, we converse, with those, who once lived and conversed, with us. Their well remembered tone mingles with the whispering breezes, with the sound of the falling leaf, with the jubilee
shout of the spring-time. The earth is filled with their shadowy train.
       But there are more substantial expressions of the presence of the dead with the living. The earth is filled with labors, the works, of the dead. Almost all the literature in the world, the discoveries of science, the glories of art, the ever-during temples, the dwelling-places of generations, the comforts and improvements of life, the languages, the maxims, the opinions, of the living, the very frame-work of society, the institutions of nations, the fabrics of empires‚ -all are the works of the dead; by these, they who are dead yet speak. Life-busy, eager, craving, importunate, absorbing life-yet what is its sphere,  compared with the empire of death! What, in other words, is the sphere of visible, compared with the mighty empire of invisible life! They live-they live indeed, whom we call dead. They live in our thoughts; they live in our blessings; they live in our life; -death hath no power over them." Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D.