s,
but also to the living. Those that remain behind are greatly benefited
thereby. It exerts a sanctifying, elevating and alluring influence over
them. As they pass in their bright pathway to heaven, they leave a blessing
behind. God takes them in goodness to us. The interests of the parents are
not different from, or opposed to, those of their offspring. The happiness
of the latter is that of the former. If, therefore, their death is their
blessing, it must be the parent's blessing also. "If love," says Baxter,
"teaches us to mourn with them that mourn, and rejoice with them that
rejoice, then can we mourn for those of our children that are possessed of
the highest everlasting happiness?"

It is true, their sweet faces, unfurrowed by guilt or shame, we shall
never more gaze upon; the sound of their happy lullaby we shall never again
hear. They are gone now to the spirit-land. But a parent's care and
solicitude are also gone. All alarm for their safety is gone; and you now
rejoice in the assurance that they have gone to a higher and happier home;
and can joyfully exclaim now with Leigh Richmond, "My child is a saint in
glory!" His infant powers, so speedily paralyzed by the ruthless hand of
death, are now expanding themselves amidst the untold glories of the
heavenly world, and are enlisted now in ministering to his pilgrim kindred
on earth.

It is true, your children were a source of great joy to you here.
Insensibly did they entwine themselves around your heart, and with all the
wild ecstasy of maternal love, you embraced them, as they attached
themselves, like the slender vine, to you. They were indeed, the life and
light of your home, and the deepest joy of your heart. But if they had
lived, might they not also have been a source of the deepest sorrow and
misery? Might they not have drawn your souls from God and heaven, causing
you to live alone for them, and bringing eventually your gray hairs down
with sorrow to the grave?

But you have watched at their dying couch, and seen them die; and in that
death you have also seen the departure of all such fears and dangers. They
are now transplanted to a more congenial clime, where they will bloom
forever in unfading loveliness, and from which they will come on errands
of ministering love to your household:--

"They come, on the wings of the morning they come,
Impatient to lead some poor wanderer home;
Some pilgrim to snatch from his stormy abode,
And lay him