Oh, with this view of death
and with this hope of joining love's buried ones again, you can gather
those that yet remain, and talk to them of those you put, cold and
speechless, in their bed of clay; and while their bodies lie exposed to the
winter's storm or to the summer's heat, you can point the living to that
cheering promise which spans, as with an areole of glory, the graves of
buried love; you can tell them they shall meet their departed kindred in a
better home. Oh, clasp this promise to your aching heart; treasure it up as
a pearl of great price. Your departed children are not lost to you; and
their death to them is great gain. They are not lost, but only sent before.
"The Lord, has taken them away." With these views of death before you, and
with the moral instructions they afford, you cannot but feel that your
children, though absent from you in body, are with you in spirit,--are
still living with you in your household, and are among that spirit-throng
which ever press around you, to bear you up lest you dash your foot against
a stone. Such were the feelings of the Christian father, as expressed in
the following touching lines:--
"I cannot make him dead!
When passing by his bed,
So long watched over with parental care,
My spirit and my eye
Seek it inquiringly,
Before the thought comes that--he is not there!
"When at the day's calm close
Before we seek repose,
I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer,
Whate'er I may be saying,
I am, in spirit, praying
For our boy's spirit, though--he is not there!
"Not there? Where, then, is he?
The form I used to see
Was but the raiment that he used to wear.
Pages:
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311