ed, which none but death could unseal. A proper sense of the
spirit-world is developed; life appears in its naked reality; heaven gains
new attractions; eternity becomes a holier theme,--a more cheerful object
of thought; the true relation of this to the life to come, is realized; and
the presence of the world of the unseen enters more deeply into our moral
consciousness.

Though our loved ones are gone, they are still with us in spirit; yea, they
are ours still, in the best sense of possession; our relationship with them
is not destroyed, but hallowed. Though absent, they still live and love;
and they come thronging as ministering spirits to our hearts; they hover
near us, and commune with us. Though death may separate us from them, it
does not disunite us. Your departed children, though separated from you in
body, are still yours, are with you in spirit, and are members of your
family. They represent your household in heaven, and are a promise that you
will be there also. You are still their parents; you are still one
family,--one in spirit, in faith, in hope, in promise, in Christ. You still
dwell together in the fond memories of home, and in the bright
anticipation of a coming reunion in heaven. Oh, with this view of death
and with this hope of joining love's buried ones again, you can gather
those that yet remain, and talk to them of those you put, cold and
speechless, in their bed of clay; and while their bodies lie exposed to the
winter's storm or to the summer's heat, you can point the living to that
cheering promise which spans, as with an areole of glory, the graves of
buried love; you can tell them they shall meet their departed kindred in a
better home. Oh, clasp this promise to your aching heart; treasure it up as
a pearl of great price. Your departed children are not lost to you; and
their death to them is great gain. They are not lost, but only sent before.
"The Lord, has taken them away." With these views of death before you, and
with the moral instructions they afford, you cannot but feel that your
children, though absent from you in body, are with you in spirit,--are
still living with you in your household, and are among that spirit-throng
which ever press around you, to bear you up lest you dash your foot against
a stone. Such were the feelings of the Christian father, as expressed in
the following touching lines:--

"I cannot make him dead!
When passing by his bed,
So long watched over wit