vainly tried some comfort there to trace;
I've listened to the short and struggling breath;
I've seen the cherub eye grow dim in death;
Like thee, I've veiled my head in speechless gloom,
And laid my first-born in the silent tomb!"

Now in all these bereavements of the Christian home we have developed the
wisdom and goodness of God; and the consideration of this we commend to the
bereaved as a great comfort. They are but the execution of God's merciful
design concerning the family. Pious parents can, therefore, bless the Lord
for these afflictions. It is often well for both you and your children that
bereavements come. They come often as the ministers of grace. The tendency
of home is to confine its supreme affections within itself, and not yield
them unto God. Parents often bestow upon their children all their love, and
live for them alone. Then God lays his rod upon them, takes their loved
ones to his own arms, to show them the folly of using them as abusing them.
If home had no such bereavements, eternity would be lost sight of; God
would not be obeyed; souls would be neglected; natural affection would
crush the higher incentives and restraints of faith; earthly interests
would push from our hearts all spiritual concerns; and our tent-home in
this vale of tears would be substituted for our heavenly home. We see,
therefore, the benevolent wisdom of God in ordaining bereavements to arrest
us from the control of unsanctified natural affection. When we see the
flowers of our household withered and strewn around us; when that which we
most tenderly loved and clung to, is taken from us in an unexpected hour,
we begin to see the futility of living for earthly interests alone; and we
turn from the lamented dead to be more faithful to the cherished and
dependent living.

Let us, therefore, remember that in all our afflictions God has some
merciful design, the execution of which will contribute to the temporal and
eternal welfare of our home. He designs either to correct us if we do
wrong, or to prevent us from doing wrong, or to test our Christian
fidelity, or to instruct us in the deep mysteries and meandering ways of
human life, and keep before us the true idea of our homes and lives as a
pilgrimage. Nothing, save supernatural agencies, so effectually removes the
moral film from our intellectual eye as the hand of bereavement. Death is a
great teacher. Sources of pensive reflection and spiritual communion are
open