It is a just representation that the child of tender years, whom death calls, is "taken away from the evil to come;" that is, as human experience reasons. No mortal life is free from this conflict with evil. And in the conflict how many are overcome in spirit, and destroyed! The departed little ones shall suffer no such defeats in their onward course. They are still cared for. If they had guardians in the present brief life, so have they guardians now. If they were here cared for and tenderly nursed, so shall they be in that home where the guardianship of souls is perpetual, and never interrupted by mortal weariness, or separation, or death. The vigils of paternal anxiety here kept for them, were but as the mote to the globe in comparison with that wakeful, watchful love that shall go with them evermore. Parents might forget their tenderest offspring; so said the word of heavenly truth; even the mother the child of her bosom. Not so the Father of spirits, the provident and unchanging God of all.* God cares for them, and will not leave nor forsake them. They are still ours. If God graciously loaned them into our hands, it was that we might be identified with them forever. If we held them for him, he now holds them for us. So we are to think of them as treasures safely invested, more so than any treasure subject to earthly keeping. The parent cannot separate himself in soul from that absent one. bereaved mother will still strain it to her beating bosom. The departed cannot be forgotten by her; she cannot make herself believe, when she sends it away to the grave, that there ends her communion with that child of her heart. "One who had suffered The *Read Isa. xlix. 15. this dreadful calamity, and just at that period in the life of the infant when in general it is endeared to the parents, used to relate that for a long period she saw her child once more almost every night. Sometimes the endearing vision was presented to her in one way, and sometimes in another; but on all occasions the infant appeared to be alive. In one particular instance she was led to see the grave in a lonely church-yard. It was one of many little mounds which filled the place, and beside which stood many other mothers, in the same situation with herself. Presently the graves were all opened, and the children came forth to play. She and the other mothers surveyed the scene with pleasure inexpressible; but yet, in all their sports, the infants did not appear to be naturally alive, nor did the mothers seem to understand that life was there, or that they had regained their lost treasures. It was only a pageant, vouchsafed to satisfy so far the yearnings of affection; the scene was still a church-yard, and in the same place they knew it would end. Accordingly, when the proper time had come, each mother took her child, wrapped it tenderly in its sepulchral attire, and with her own hands replaced it in the grave; after which they all slowly and mournfully withdrew. The dreamer then awoke, as she usually did after such visions, in tears." How true to the living and yearning affections of a mother is this relation! And has not Heaven an adequate answer to these affections? As the Lord is true, it has. And such a conviction may lead the bereaved and sorrowing mother to say of that infant now in death's embrace, as did the Shunamite woman to the prophet, "It is well with the child! it is well!" The presence of the dead shall be not only แ a pageant, vouchsafed to satisfy so far the yearnings of affection," it shall be a divine reality, now, and henceforth! Christian faith will look beyond that state where the loved one if taken in dreams from the grave must be replaced there again, to that higher realm where no graves are seen, no parting, or weeping, or death can come. Thanks to Heaven for the beautiful memories of the infant dead. These early lost of our families always keep their places in memory as infants and children. Our associations connected with them are those of young and innocent being. We are chastened and subdued when such memories rightly hold us. They aid us in spiritualizing the hard realities of all maturer earthly life, so that we may be attracted toward that perfection where the innocence of infancy dwells with the vastest experience and mightiest intellectual grasp of the angelic and divine. If earthly infancy is called for to add to the heavenly life, let it be yielded up in faith; faith such as we find expressed in this outpouring of the parent's heart, when his last child was taken from him. "Farewell, my young blossom! The fairest, the fleetest; The pride of my bosom, The last and the sweetest. On thee my heart centred All hopes earth could cherish; The spoiler hath entered, I see thy bloom wasting, Could prayers detain thee, To linger to languish That life may be sorrow! In mercy steal o'er thee! And heaven is before thee. Oh loveliest! oh dearest! When anguish oppressed thee, My prayer still hath blessed thee; How welcome that sighing! My prayer has ascended! 'Tis heard- she is dying! My God! I adore thee! Take the gem that thou gavest, Take the flower thou dost sever; "IT IS WELL." WHEN the prophet Elisha saw the Shunamite woman, who had just lost her son by death, coming to consult him, he sent his servant to meet her, and to ask her, "Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well."* This is faith's conclusion when death comes. It is well that men live; for this is God's ordination. It is well that they are afflicted, for this is to try them. It is well that they die, for God hath more to do with them than what is witnessed here by mortals. It shall be well with them beyond death; because they cannot there be out of the reach of the Father's hand. The blessed revelation of Christian truth assures us always that it is well with the dead. It comes to "deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage." THE PLACE TO DIE. MANY have spoken and written respecting the time to die. Many more would be anxious as to the place. And of all the places no one seems more befitting the last mortal change than that of home. To die far away from the blessed offices of kindred affection such as home can bestow, is one of the severest trials of the soul. That was a beautiful form of blessing among the orientals, “May you die among your kindred!" But, wherever death shall come, the assurances of Christian truth can sanctify the place, and make it a portal of heaven. Said a minister of Christianity, as he sat with his companion upon the wreck threatened every moment to be swallowed up by the waves, "Faith in Christ can make death easy, even amid 2 Kings iv. 25, 26. |