his gifts, then the removal of them will make us love him more than ever.

We often hear it said, that every thing which happens to us is for our good, even in this world.—Many things happen to men, even to Christians, which are plainly not for their good in this life, though all things will, eventually, work together for good to them that love God. Some things, then, even here, 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 see us suffer, even when he foresees that no good will result to the sufferer. For while men suffer excruciatingly under bereavements, these sufferings often fail to make them better. God foresees all this. Hence God is able to look upon suffering which he sees will not be for the good of the afflicted.

If, now, his design in our trials (which pierced his heart before they reached ours) is utterly frustrated by our sins, the question will arise, whether the God who can bear to see us suffer for our good, which, nevertheless, he foresees will not be effected, will not be able to see us suffer as the fruit of our sins, and of our resistance to his designs. One who has endured much mental suffering cannot 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 object fails through our perverseness, we are instructed, by our experience, that if God can look on mental anguish and not relieve it, because he seeks an ulterior good, the punishment of sin, the natural and just consequences of disobedience to the great laws of the universe, may be, in their extended impression, another ulterior good, which will warrant the same mental sufferings after death, and forever.

Could I be permitted, therefore, I would take by the hand every bereaved father whom so great an affliction as the death of a child has not succeeded in bringing into a state of preparation for heaven, and kindly ask how he expects to bear a final and endless separation. "If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?" God describes to his ancient people one of the great sorrows which will happen to them, if they forsake him, in their separations, by captivity, from their children: "Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing, for them all the day long; and there shall be no might in thy hand." Pains of absence, sudden convulsions of feeling at the remembered looks, form, words, and motions of a loved one, sometimes are as when men feel the earth quaking under them; and then, again, they entirely prostrate us, for the moment, like a tornado. Homesickness in a foreign land,—an ocean stretching between us and the objects of our love—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, knowing that his family are there, and that if his influence had had its full effect, they would all have perished with him,—or a father with a part of his children with him in perdition, the wife and mother with one or more of the children in heaven,—is a picture of woe which nothing but timely repentance and faith in Christ may prevent from being a reality in the experience of some who read these lines. Can it be true, as Bishop Hall says, that "to be happy is not so sweet a state as it is miserable to have been happy"? O man, if you have a child in heaven, think that, among the sweet influences of divine love, there probably is no more powerful motive to draw your affections towards God, than that glimpse which you sometimes seem to have of this child's face, on which heaven has traced its lineaments of peace and bliss; or that sudden whisper of a gentle, child-like voice, now and then heard by the ear of fancy, persuading you to be a Christian. Do not let the world, or shame, or procrastination, lead you to resist such efforts of almighty love to save you. He who has had a child saved by Christ, and will not be himself a Christian,—what more can God do to save him?

The breaking up of our homes is one of the mysteries of God's providence. The last thing, perhaps, which we might suppose would be allowed, is, the removal of a mother from a family of young children. This being so frequent, we cease to wonder at any other dispensations; we conclude that separations are to be made, regardless of any and every seeming necessity and endearment. "Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of our lives." The conviction is forced upon us 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, my librarian, my clerk. My papers now bear her indorsement. She pursued her studies in my office, by my side, sat with me, walked with me, was my inexpressibly sweet and inseparable companion,—never left me but to go and sit with her mother. We knew all her intelligence, all her pure and delicate sensibility, the quickness and power of her perceptions, her seraphic love. She was all love, and loved all God's creation, even the animals, trees, and plants. She loved her God and Saviour with an angel's love, and died like a saint."[A]