Catharine

-bed where the

s: 'Tis death i

eri

to gratify the fondness of parental love, to commend the Saviour of my child to other hearts, and to obtain for Him the affections of those to whom He is able and willing to be all which He was to her, is the sole object of these pages. Listen, then, not to a parent'

ven years of age, she gave the clearest evidence that she was renewed by the Holy Spirit. We had since that time been made happy by the growing power of Christian principle in her conduct, th

power of unfaltering Christian hope, which was evidently derived from a very clear perception of

ee his child made competent to meet so intelligently and deliberately, and to overcome, the last enemy, and, in doing so, helping to sustain and to comfort those who loved her, will perceive that it is a gift from God whose value nothing can increase. Bereavement and separation take nothing from it, but, on the contrary, they illustrate an

where no beneficial end is to be secured, is cruel. A mistaken, and somewhat morbid, sense of duty to tell the whole truth, and a conscientious but unenlightened fear of practising deception, sometimes lead friends to remove, from a sick person, that power which hope gives in sustaining the sickness, in prolonging comfort, and in helping the gradual descent into the grave. When a sick person is resolute and hopeful, it is surprising to see how many annoyances of sickness are prevented or easily borne, and how life, and even cheerfulness, may be indefinitely extended. But when hope is taken away, or, rather, when, instead of looking towards life with that instinctive love of it which God has implanted, we turn from "the warm preci

de, one morning I received the intimation that those days would, in all probability, be but very few. After the physician had left the ho

in which father and child must part, and the father was to break that

ed thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be bur

nance, "Why, father, you surprise me; I thought that I might get well; is it possible that I cannot live long? I have thought of recovering much more than of dying... It seems a long space to pass over between this and heaven, in so short a time. I wonder how I can so suddenly obtain all the feelings which I need for such a change." These expressions I wro

ry thing is settled. I have nothing to do-no fear, no anxiety about any thing. More passages of Scripture and verses of hymns have come to my mind to-day, than in all my sickness hitherto." Wishes respecting some family arrangements were then expressed, particularly with reference to the younger children, and these wishes were uttered in about the same tone and mann

t. Names of Christ flowed in upon my mind; and once I awoke with these words in my thoughts-'And there shall be no night there.' Now I know that I am to die, I feel less nervous. I have a calm, unruffled feeling." She expressed some natural apprehensions, only, about the possi

I have had was to assort some leaves of flowers into forms for you. As my bouquets fell to pieces; I gathered the best petals, and leaves, and sprigs, and I have them in a book;" which, at her request, I then reached for her. I turned the pages. The book was full of beautiful relics from tokens of remembrance which kind friends had sent to her, and among them were

y Fa

ich gave me such

in my sickn

ugh faded; they

hat my heart

ased to know that their gifts did not wholly perish, but that they w

the blood of Christ." The way of justification by faith was clear to her mind. She knew whom she beli

ushed, she said, "I shall sing in heaven." Her voice had been the ch

rim, and I'

I can tarry b

moment sh

ntry to whic

my Redeemer i

d of it only to renew it. There was-" And here she checked herself, saying, "But I will not mention any name," a feeling

spending the Sabbath forenoon by h

ft that be

ckness, Lo

st, how sof

and the su

a bunch of flowers; all showing that her religious feelings were not raptures, but flowed along upon a level with he

ospects in this life. I said, "Would you exchange conditions with her?" "Not for ten thousand

cold sweats, the labored respiration, all had the effect merely to make her ask, "How long do you think I must suffer?" That

d's time; that there were sufferings yet necessary to her complete preparation for heaven, of which she would see the use hereafter, but

merited, and more than forfeited, yet she spoke of her crown, because she believed with a simple faith, taking Christ at his word, and being willing to receive rewards and honors from him without projecting her own sense of unworthiness to stay the overflowings of infinite love and grace towards her. So that, in her own esteem as undeserving as the chief of sinners, thinki

a surprising effort, such as she had been incapable of for some time, and reached forward from her pillow, saying, "Who is that at the door?" The nurse was with her alone, an

er if she

de no

mile played about her mouth.

She gave me no sign-that smile being her last in

d not come, but chiefly because the consolations of the trying scene, and hopes full of immortality, had not lost their new power. I was therefore like

-no, they are more concentrated than hours,-there are moments, when the thought of a lost and loved one, who has perished out of your family circle, suspends all interest in every thing else; when the memory of the departed floats over you like a wandering p

ty; she whose child-like love was turning into the womanly affection for a father; she who was complete in herself, as every good child is, not suggesting to your thoughts what you would have a child be, but filling out the orb of your ideal beauty, still partly in outline; her seat, her place at the table, at prayers, at the piano, at chu

comes to my sorrowing heart some such message as the sons of Jacob brought to their fat

who laid deep and strong foundations in her character for goodness and knowledge. He has saved her for me, through all eternity. She will be my sweet singer again; she will have in store for me all the wonderful discoveries which her intense love of beauty will have made her treasure up, to impart, when the child b

herself be, when these eyes behold her again? And what will she have treasured up to tell me? she, who always brought rare things for me from the woods and the shore, surpassing those of her companions. If He who redeemed her, and has presented her faultless before the presence of

sometimes, on coming home, and feeling in the mood of it, I wished to handle it, and instead of unlocking the case to see if the instrument were there, I would knock upon it; and straightway what turbulence of harmonies rang from all the strings. Now, it is so with ever

he sick children; we opened the door and listened. This daughter was singing, and the chorus of her little school song was, "All are here, all are here." She did not think of the signification which those words had to our hearts. It was one of those household pleasures which have so much

oys; we must each stand in his lot; we must send children forth into the harvest of the earth for sheaves, and whether they faint and die under their load, or deck themselves with garlands,-still, let them be laborers together with God, and let us not seek exemption for them. But if God ordains their early translation to heaven, what can earth afford them in the way of pleasure, granting the

at your justification, by free grace, has the evidence afforded by its fruits; and the preparation to die may be likened to that of which the Saviour speaks when he says, "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit." I have seen it, have watched it, have studied it, in the dying scenes of this child. Hers was not the experience of the sinner, pulled suddenly from the waves by a hand which he had for a long time, nay, always, spurned; but her dying was an arrival at the end of a voyage, the coming home of a good child to long-expecting hearts and arms. We said one to another around her dying bed,-yes, we had composure to say, as we watched that parting scene, that fading cloud, that sinking gale, that dying wave, that shutting eye of day,-"Think of such a poor, helpless, dying creature, if, in the sense intended by those words, she should 'fall into the hands of the living God.'" And we glorified God in her. Never did I see and feel more deeply, by contrast, the folly of trusting to a death-bed repentance, to repair the errors of a wasted life. It is a deliberate attempt at fraud upon the Most High; it is folly; for the risk is fearful, and could we obtain salvation, how mercenarily!-and what a memorial woul

n and prayer were impossible, and she told me, on saying this, that she took great comfort from a remark, in a book, addressed to a sick person-"Do not think, but pray." She prayed much herself; her thoughts, too, were prayers, in certain cases. Now, in that weakened condition, what could she have done, and what would have been her father's feelings, had she not, in health and strength, arrived at such a state of religious knowledge and experience as to remove anxiety for her spiritual welfare, and to make us feel that she had Christ in her, the hope of glory? When the cry was made, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh," she arose and trimmed her lamp, and had oil in her vessel with her lamp. Wealth could not purchase the relief and satisfaction which this gave to her friends;-so tru

power and love. The Choir struck the key note of heaven in their opening strains, by chanting, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and bl

rim, and I'

I can tarry b

in our minds; and in the closing hymn, how strange it seemed, at a funeral, to hear the si

m abroad

is matchl

onders

gh hell's d

hole eart

igh heaven

ctory'

as they cried one

the glor

ugh the he

shall

who pierc

se shall

e your Kin

ear Lor

Friends and strangers, touched with her protracted sickness, poured blessings around her couch; fruits, in their season, and when out of their season, of what almost unearthly beauty! and flowers which, with the fruits, made that sick room seem like the garden which the Lord planted in Eden. Such have been the alleviations of pain and suffering, the comforts, and even the pleasures, and above all the rich spiritual con

, and whose dying hours, and whose griefs, are oftentimes in such contrast to those into which divine and human loving kindness seem striving to pour their abundant consolations. As the family retired from the dying scene, and were weeping together, a father came to my door, in that great snow-storm, to say that his son, the young man, not a member of my congregation, whom I had several times visited, was near his end, and would like to see me. Stranger comparatively though he was, and impassable as the streets were by any vehicle, and almost by foot passengers, my gratitude for the sweet and peaceful end of my own dear child, and for her undoubted admission to the realms of bliss, was such, that, within an hour or two, I forced

esus will raise her up at the last day; her voice will come to that body; her youthful beauty will be reestablished by her likeness to Christ's own glorious body; she will lean upon my arm again; the separation and absence will enhance

love, let r

ting sile

rmonious h

ur's prai

, the Forerunner in the dark passages of life, the Conqueror of death, the L

live, can only make you feel how little their fond love can do for you. When the name of father, cannot rouse you, nor your cold hand retu

has been blessed to the salvation of my child. It should make me love the children of my pastoral charge more than ever, seek to gather them into the fold of Christ, that whole families, each like a conste

and friends, and greatly afflicts them; and thus he teaches othe

anguish, and f

anguish, shall t

en we are bereaved, we employ ourselves occasionally in rehearsing before him the circumstances in his past goodness, which, at the time, made it exceedingly sweet and precious. Our debt of obligation for it is not yet fully pa

to depress the mind inordinately. We que

d and

to have lov

rrespective of the future. Must God abstain from making us exceedingly happy, because, forsooth, we shall be so unhappy when, in the exercise of the same goodness and wi

wns, I'll praise t

urce whence past

ere, are intended to be life-long sorrows and trials. Their object is reproof and constant admonition. We need another state of existence to explain the present. If that future state does not prove that earthly discipline has had its designed effect, the sorrows of this life show that God can bear to

have failed to see, that God's parental relation to us is not analogous to that of parent and child among men. It terminates in the relations of governor and of judge; being, indeed, from the first, included in those relations. This is not so in our earthly relationship. God sees men suffer as no earthly parent could; he inflicts pain as no earthly parent should. All is for our profit; but if that obje

ove-is an admonition to us with respect to future, endless separations. The hopeless death of a child has sometimes had the effect to change the long-established faith of a parent with regard to future retribution; all the acknowledged principles of interpretation, all the results of meditation and prayer, the theory of the divine government which has been built up in the soul, till it became identified with personal consciousness, the whole analogy of faith,-all, have been swept away by the overmastering power of parental love for one who, when he died, left his friends to sorrow as they that have no hope. Now, supposing a parent to fail of heaven, and to retain his instinctive parental feelings, the endless separation between him and his family will be a source of sorrow which needs only to be kept up, by an ever-living memory, to constitute all which is pictured in the boldest metaphors of inspired tongues and pens. A father in disgrace, or under ignominy, suffers intensely when he sees or thinks of his children, provided his natural sensibilities are not destroyed. A father punished, hereafter, by his Redeemer and Judge, a father banished from the company of heaven

that there is another world, for which we must make all our calculations. "There is a better world," said the distinguished William Wirt, after the death of his daughter, in 1831,-"there is a better world, of which I have thought too little. To that world she has gone, and thither my affections have followed her. This was Heaven's design. I see and feel it as distinctly as if an angel had revealed it. I often imagine that I can see her beckoning me to the happy world to which she has gone. She was my companion, my office companion,

of William Wirt-l

time, he writ

ich he is showing us the attractive face of our blessed and happy child, and bidding us prepare to come to her, since she can no more visibly come to us. I have no taste now for worldly business. I go t

another daughter di

bited ... do to the whole of real life. Nor is there any thing in this passing pageant worth the sorrow that we lavish on it. Now, when my children or friends leave m

of William Wirt-let

n themes touching this subject, God grant that every one who has not yet gladdened the heart of parent, and pastor, nay, of that infinite Friend, our Saviour, by the surrender of the heart to God, and every father and mother who is yet unprepared to join the growing circle of the family in heaven,-('how grows in Paradise their store!')-may, as we reach the last page, find that with cords of a man, with bands of love, He who m