IV. HINTS FOR SERMONS AND

ADDRESSES.

I. DEATH IN INFANCY.

Jer. xxxi. 15-17. "Thus saith the Lord, A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not. Thus saith the Lord, Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border.”

1. The human sense of loss. 2. The divine comfort. 3. The reward of work. 4. The hope for the children. Matt. xix. 14. "But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven."

I. "Redemption," says Mercein,* "placed the first child in its mother's arms."

2. The less we know of evil

come to Jesus." 3. We are

4. Heaven is their happiest

place; the city is "full of boys and girls playing in the streets" (Zech. viii. 5).

2 Kings iv. 26. "Run now, I pray thee, to meet her,

*"Childhood and the Church,” p. 19.

and say unto her, Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well."

"Whatever has been His will is well-grandly wellwell even for that in me which feared, and in those very respects in which it feared that it might not be well. The whole being of me, past and present, shall say: it is infinitely well, and I would not have it otherwise."—George MacDonald.

This was 1. Death by a summer sickness. den death.

2. A sud3. The death of an only child.-The light of faith is brighter because of the rifted cloud through which it shines.

Gen. xxi. 16.

"For she said, Let me not see the

death of the child."

Hagar. The mother's struggle. I. It was her child. 2. It was a child whom she hoped to see in a high station. 3. The grief and disappointment over the impending death. [This is not the child of prayer and promise that Isaac was.]

Sol. Song vi. 2. "My beloved is gone down into his garden, to gather lilies."

1. How pure they are! 2. Yet how easily they sully and fade! 3. He who loves them gathers them soon. 4. It is the Beloved and it is His garden.

2 Sam. xii. 23. “But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

1. Persistent grief is always wrong, because it is useless. 2. We shall go to the children. 3. We are led thus to think more of heaven, for it makes it more homelike to have the children there.

David's sin was the scribe of his sorrow. His crime had a resurrection in his grief. Note: that we

may repent and be forgiven, but God does not intend that we should forget from what He saves us.

Ps. lxxxix. 45. "The days of his youth hast thou

shortened.'

Many times we can see why the life was shortened. Again it is hard and perhaps impossible to do so. But, like the prelude to a symphony, we cannot complain when what comes after is so glorious.

Zech. viii. 5. "And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.”

The heavenly Jerusalem will be full of such gladness and freedom. I. In the other world children will have changed less, than those who are older and "further off from heaven." (Cf. Thomas Hood's poem, "I remember, I remember.") 2. He who watched the children at their sports here (Matt. xi. 16; Lu. vii. 32) will not restrain their spirits there. 3. Nowadays the child dies": an hundred years old" (lit. "lad," Is. lxv. 20), through opportunities of knowledge which the ancients never had. 4. Let us be thankful that childlike children here (Mark x. 15) and hereafter (Rev. xii. 5) are heaven's own.

Matt. xviii. IO. "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."

A notable and neglected truth. The child is the true citizen of heaven (Lu. xviii. 17), and the pure in heart alone shall see God (Matt. v. 8).

"The lines of truth or error, seen from the hearth-side through that trustful eye, are the meridians and parallels which will map out all after-existence."-Mercein.

Jonah iv. 7. "But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered."

1. He who planted can wither. 2. The least disease (a "worm") is to be dreaded, if we begin to forget Him. 3. But see how God guided Jonah through this, for he was hard-hearted about the woe of others.

Kisagotami's child died. She went to Buddha and asked help. He bade her bring him a handful of mustardseed from a house where no death had occurred. But when, with her child on her hip, she went from house to house, death had always preceded her. Then she learned that sorrow came to others as well as to herself, and she buried the child in a wood.—Condensed from Max Müller's Translation.

Job. xxix. 2-5. "Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness; as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle; when the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were about me."

Compare with this Job xlii. 10–17. Notice that as soon as the selfishness of sorrow passed away (v. 10, "When he prayed for his friends") God restored to him the joy of His presence.

This is especially fit for those who do not lose children until middle-age.

1 Chron. vii. 22. "And Ephraim their father mourned many days, and his brethren came to comfort him."

Truly a brother is born for adversity."

"Christ is the friend of the heart, its needed friend, as certainly as He is the Saviour of the soul."-Dora Greenwell. "He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white."

Joel i. 7.

How many are the girdled trees that seem only to await their fall! To strip the young twigs from the vine, and the young bark from the fig tree, is the analogy to the loss of children.

Is. xl. II. "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young."

Very often by taking the lambs into his "upper fold," and thus laying up these treasures in heaven, he leads the parents there also.

Is. xlix. 21. "I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro."

II.

Homes" removed to and fro"; grief, making us desolate and bringing us into captivity-these are the frequent results of the loss of children.

'Cf. Eli's sons, 'In one day they shall die.'- -1 Sam. ii. 34. Jeroboam's son, 'When thy feet enter the city, the child shall die.'-1 Kings xiv. 12. The widow's son, 'Art thou come to call my sin to remembrance and to slay my son?' I Kings xvii. 18. The Shunamite's son, 'Sat on her knees till noon and died.'-2 Kings iv. 20. Job's children, 'The house fell, and they are dead.'

Job i. 19. The Ruler's daughter, 'My daughter is even now dead.'-Matt. ix. 18. The widow of Nain's son, 'The Lord said, Weep not.'-Luke vii. 13."-Seed-Thought.

IN EARLY LIFE.

1 Sam. ii. 33, 34. "And the man of thine, whom I shall not cut off from mine altar, shall be to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine heart and all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age. And this shall be a sign unto thee, that shall come upon