asketh shall receive! Oh, might I take you by the hand,—perhaps you have come from a newly-made grave, or left the child at home dead, and God has made me a messenger to you this morning, — oh, might I take you by the hand and say, "We cannot bring him back again, the spirit is gone beyond recall, but you may follow"! Behold the ladder of light before you! The first step upon it is repentance, out of thyself; the next step is faith, into Christ, and when thou art there, thou art fairly and safely on thy way, and ere long thou shalt be received at heaven's gates by those very little ones who have gone before, that they may come to welcome thee when thou shouldst land upon the eternal shores.

A MOTHER CONGRATULATED ON THE DEATH OF HER CHILD.

[The following letter occurs in "Selections from the Correspondence of R. E. H. Greyson, Esq.," edited by Professor Henry Rodgers, the eminent author of "The Eclipse of Faith: "-]

LONDON, 1839.

MY SWEET COUSIN, I have in vain tried to tell a lie for your sake, and say, — I condole

with you.

But it is impossible. How can I, with my

deep convictions that your little floweret, and every other so fading, is but transplanted into the more congenial soil of Paradise, and shall there bloom and be fragrant for ever? How can I lament for one who has so cheaply become an heir of immortality"? who will never remember his native home of earth, nor the transient pang by which he was born into heaven! who will never even know that he has suffered except by being told so! Shall we lament that he has not shared our fatal privilege of an experience of guilt and sorrow? Is this so precious that we can wish him partaker of it? My cousin, those who die in childhood are to be envied and felicitated, not deplored; so soon, so happily have they escaped all that we must wish never to have known.

"Innocent souls, thus set so early free

From sin, and sorrow, and mortality,"

who can weep for them, as he thinks of the fearful hazards that all must run who have grown up to a personal acquaintance with sin and misery?

An ancient Greek historian tells us it was a custom among a people of Scythia to celebrate the birth of a child with the same mournful solemnities with which the rest of the world celebrate a funeral. So intensely dark, yet so true (apart from the gospel), was the view

they took of what awaits man in life! The custom was fully justified, in my judgment, by a heathen view of things; and if it would be unseemly among us, it is only because Christianity has brought "life and immortality to light," and assures us that this world may become, for all of us, the vestibule of a better.

"You are very philosophical," you will say: "You talk very fine, but you do not feel as you talk." Excuse me, my dear; I talk just as I have always felt ever since I came to a knowledge of Christianity and of human life; and often yes, often in the course of my own (and let the thought be consolation to you, for how do you know that your little one might not have tasted the same bitter experience?)

often in the course of my life, as I have looked back and seen how much of it has been blurred and wasted; what perils I have run of spiritual shipwreck; what clouds of doubt still often descend and envelop the soul; what agonies of sorrow I have passed through, — often have I cried, with hands smiting each other and a broken voice, "Oh that I had been thus privileged early to depart!" ― But you cannot imagine a mother echoing such feelings in relation to her own child! Can you not? Come let us see.

There was once a mother, kneeling by the

bedside of the little one whom she hourly expected to lose. With what eyes of passionate love had she watched every change in that beautiful face! How had her eyes pierced the heart of the physician, at his last visit, when they glared rather than asked the question whether there yet was hope! How had she wearied heaven with vows that if it would but grant-"Ah!" you say, "you can imagine all that without any difficulty at all."

Imagine this, too. Overwearied with watching, she fell into a doze beside the couch of her infant, and she dreamt in a few moments (as we are wont to do) the seeming history of long years. She thought she heard a voice from heaven say to her, as to Hezekiah, "I have seen thy tears, I have heard thy prayers; he shall live; and yourself shall have the roll of his history presented to you." "Ah!" you say, "you can imagine all that, too."

Yet

And straightway she thought she saw her sweet child in the bloom of health, innocent and playful as her fond heart could wish. a little while, and she saw him in the flush of opening youth; beautiful as ever, but beautiful as a young panther, from whose eyes wild flashes and fitful passion ever and anon gleamed; and she thought how beautiful he looked, even in those moods, for she was a

mother. But she also thought how many tears and sorrows may be needful to temper or quench those fires!

And she seemed to follow him through a rapid succession of scenes, now of troubled sunshine, now of deep gathering gloom. His sorrows were all of the common lot, but involved a sum of agony far greater than that which she would have felt from his early loss; yes, greater even to to her, and how much greater to him! She saw him more than once wrestling with pangs more agonizing than those which now threatened his infancy; she saw him involved in error, and with difficulty extricating himself; betrayed into youthful sins, and repenting with scalding tears; she saw him half ruined by transient prosperity, and scourged into tardy wisdom only by long adversity; she saw him worn and haggard with care, his spirit crushed, and his early beauty all wan and blasted; worse still, she saw him thrice stricken with that very shaft which she had so dreaded to feel but once, and mourned to think that her prayers had prevailed to prevent her own sorrows only to multiply his; worst of all, she saw him, as she thought, in a darkened chamber, kneeling beside a coffin in which Youth and Beauty slept their last sleep; and, as it seemed, her own image stood