so close to each other, are ended. Death is the worse in such cases for the living; and our loss seems the greater for the vividness with which memory retouches the incidents, places, and scenes connected with the departed. Thus the recital you have given of your brother's sickness has tinted the remembrance of the past months, spent so sunnily in your house in with a brighter halo than before, because now I can hope, and do hope, to pass more joyous ones with him and you where sins and doubts cannot come. TO MY BROTHER IN HEAVEN. H. W. ROCKWELL. I KNOW thou art gone to the land of the blest; Thou art gone to a land more lovely than this, And the trials of life thou'st exchanged for the That abides in the presence of God. We have wept o'er the sod that grows green on thy tomb, Where Morning, with eyes full of tears, 78 TO MY BROTHER IN HEAVEN. Weeps her dew in the wild flowers, whose beautiful bloom Seems most like the bloom of thy years. A few days of sunshine, and then comes the blast The bloom from the cheek and the blossom is past, Thou art happy now. We would not call thee back From thy home on that beautiful shore, But patiently tread life's wearisome track, Until life and its sorrows are o'er. Then, this painful dream ended, we'll meet thee at last In the beautiful land of the blest, And forget all the trials and woes of the past In the pleasures of infinite rest. The soft winds shall sigh o'er thy dreamless sleep, At the shut of day, 'mid the twilight deep, But the love that once woke in that bosom of thine We could not call thee back! no; soft be thy sleep, And green be the turf o'er thy head! "Twere better by far for the living to weep, Than to mourn o'er the lot of the dead. Thou art happy and blest 'mid that holy band That look from heaven's beautiful shore. When life and its sorrows are o'er. "Christianity teaches us to moderate our passions; to temper our affections towards all things below; to be thankful for the possession, and patient under loss, whenever He who gave shall see fit to take away." -SIR WM. TEMPLE. BEREAVEMENT. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. WHEN Some belovéds, 'neath whose eyelids lay "Is God less God that thou art mortal-sad? To smite? What can he, but, with sobbing breath, "If you be afflicted, join prayer with that God would join his spirit with it. shall be not a whit the better, but shall your correction, and beg by it Seek this in earnest, else you still endure the smart, and not 80 THE EARLY DEAD. reap the fruit thereof. Rejoice in Him who fails not, who alters not. He is still the same in himself, and to the sense of the soul that is knit to him, is then sweetest when the world is bitterest. When other comforts are withdrawn, the loss of them brings this great gain, so much the more of God and his love imparted, to make all up. They that ever found this could almost wish for things that others are afraid of. If we knew how to improve them, his sharpest visits would be his sweetest: thou wouldst be glad to catch a kiss of his hand while he is beating thee, or pulling away something from thee that thou lovest, and bless him while he is doing so."-LEIGHTON. THE EARLY DEAD. WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK. IF it be sad to mark the bowed with age They to whose bosoms, like the dawn of spring And fills the spirit with a rich repose,- g! Life openeth brightly to their ardent gaze; How sad to break the vision, and to fold Yet this is life!—to mark, from day to day, Sinking in waves of death ere chilled by time, And yet what mourner, though the pensive eye Through whose far depths the spirit's wing careers? There gleams eternal o'er their ways are flung, Who fade from earth while yet their years are young. IMPROVEMENT OF AFFLICTION. REV. ROBERT HALL. WE should be more anxious that our afflictions should benefit us than that they should be speedily removed from us; for they are intended to remove a far greater evil than any which they can occasion. It is, in reality, a most sparing and economical method which the divine Being employs, when he uses these, our light afflictions," in order to remove our sins; for sin is the great disease of our nature, which must 66 |