CONSOLATION.

PARENTAL ANXIETY REMOVED BY THE EARLY DEATH OF CHILDREN.

REV. DR. JOHN MACFARLANE, LONDON.

THE

HE ardent love you have for your children is not altogether pleasurable. It necessarily carries you into many anxious thoughts about their welfare. In this sense, they are a burden to you, and this burden becomes all the heavier the more you love them. Your own experience of this world has not exalted it, as a place of residence, in your estimation. You have tested its promises, and found them false and vain. You have tasted its pleasures, and found that they "bite like a serpent, and sting like an adder." You have groaned under its pains and penalties, and you have found out that help from man is in vain, and that miserable comforters

are all that crowd around you in the night seasons of your soul, and sore disquietudes. You, therefore, tremble when you think of your darling infants living to be cast upon such revolutionary periods in the troubled life of man, wherein, though they may preserve their integrity, they must endure hardships, but in which, also, they may lose their precious souls for ever. Their futurity, then, is at once your main difficulty, and your most fertile source of anxious foreboding. Now, has not their early death solved this difficulty for you, and ought it not, therefore, also to be your consolation? You will never have any more anxiety on their account. The various hiding-places in your hearts, from which these anxieties spring upon you, have been searched, and by death have been completely emptied.

THEIR EDUCATION IS COMPLETED. - They "know as they are known." Your utmost wish in this respect was to give them, if not a learned, at least a useful education. But God has been better than your wish. They are now in knowledge far beyond the most splendid scholars and most profound philosophers of this and of every age. Their intellectual stature is only to be accounted small when compared with the wisdom of God Himself.

Neither before angels, nor the spirits of the just made perfect, have they to veil their faces. THEIR HOLINESS IS PERFECTED. - Not one

of the infirmities they inherited from you now appertains to them, they are "holy as God is holy." Did you tremble at the thought of their exposure to the temptations of Satan and the flesh? Be assured now that they are more than conquerors through Him that loved them." Exquisitely beautiful now are those dear creatures in all the graces of the family of God. Their thoughts, their desires, their actions, are at this moment in perfect harmony with the mind of the Holy One of Israel. The same mind that is in Christ is in them; they do the will of their heavenly Father, and He is pleased with them every moment, and every moment delights their happy souls with His approving smile.

THEIR HAPPINESS IS CONSUMMATED. - You were not at ease as to measures for their future provision, and even with respect to the most likely ones, you feared that they might fail. To make them comfortable for life you are ready to sacrifice much, and you never wearied in efforts to secure for them an honorable independence. Their futurity was upon your minds all the day, and oft took from you the sleep of all the night. Surely, then, you may

cease from lamentation, when you are certified that, as they shall sin no more, so neither shall they suffer any more. They are as happy now as they can be. God has provided for them in heaven. They are now inheriting the promises. They are now in actual possession and enjoyment of "that inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away." Within them is a "well of water springing up into everlasting life;" without them is the perennial flow of the river of life; above them is the unclouded sun of God's favor; and around them are gathered the inexhaustible fountains of celestial bliss. They are so happy now that they are for ever singing. And if ever there should be a "Selah" to their song, it is only to draw in a larger inspiration for a more melodious burst of praise. They would not return to you now, much though they loved you and you them. They do not miss you now, much though you miss them. Your sorrows do not diminish their joys, and their joys ought to diminish your sorrows. Oh, who would bring them back again here, to toil, and sweat, and suffer, and, perhaps, to sin without penitence, and to die without faith? You, O weeping parent, ought to be the very last to think of it, and yours should ever be the song of gratitude.

RECOGNITION AFTER THE RESURRECTION.

REV. DR. WM. ANDERSON, GLASGOW.

How different in character will be the meeting after the resurrection! when that grave, feared as a destroyer, shall be demonstrated, as made of Christ, the regenerator of our friendsrendering back in incorruption that which it received in corruption, in glory that which it received in dishonor, in power that which it received in weakness,* a spiritual body, fit as a tabernacle for the glorified soul, that which it received a natural body, an impediment to

* In the inscription on the tombstone of my child, I have thus paraphrased the Scripture, "Sown in Infancy, he shall be raised in Manhood." When once comforting a bereaved saint with the assurance that she was the mother of a heavenly family, and that she would yet see her children in the kingdom, she inquired what I thought they would be like. I quoted 1 Cor. xv. 43 to her. "Does that mean," she said, "that they will appear like men ?” I answered, “I thought many interpretations were further from the truth." "I like that well enough," she replied, "but, oh, that it might please the Lord to show them to me, just as they were in this world, though it should be but for a minute!" - On the subject of the mode of recognition, I remark, that there are phenomena being daily exhibited, which make it no fantasy to suppose, that the ardent wish of a mother's heart going forth over the kingdom may have an attractive influence in selecting and bringing her child to her side.