bow in a corner, and whisper all around, and say complacently, "Yes,
Brother A. is a good man--but--"

Those "buts" and "ifs" ought to be christened intellectual revolvers,
for they kill more reputations than any other two words in the English
language. We have known instances where pastors and editors and others
have felt weary of living, from having to encounter the spirit of
discouragement among their brethren; and oh! how many wives, husbands
and children, are dying deaths daily from this same prolific source of
suffering. Give encouragement, then, wherever and whenever you can,
and you will find that you have not lived in vain. If God blesses
those who offer but a cup of cold water in charity, how much more will
He regard the kind heart that has refreshed a weary spirit fainting by
the way. Death quickens recollections painfully. The grave can not
hide the white faces of those who sleep. The coffin and the green
mound are cruel magnets. They draw us farther than we would go. They
force us to remember. A man never sees so far into human life as when
he looks over a wife's or mother's grave. His eyes get wondrous clear
then, and he sees as never before what it is to love and to be loved;
what it is to injure the feelings of the loved.

Let us deal gently with those around us. Remember every day a flower
is plucked from some sunny home; a breach made in some happy circle; a
jewel stolen from some treasury of love; each day from summer fields of
life some harvester disappears--yea, every hour some sentinel falls
from his post and is thrown from the ramparts of time into the surging
waters of eternity. Even as I write, the funeral of one who died
yesterday winds like a winter shadow along some silent street. Daily,
when we rise from the bivouac to stand at our posts, we miss some
brother soldier whose cheering cry in the sieges and struggles of the
past has been as fire from heaven upon our hearts. Each day some pearl
drops from the jeweled thread of friendship--some harp to which we have
listened has been hushed forever. Love, however, annihilates death
even; blots away all record of time and creates the world it lives in;
conjures back arms to embrace, lips to kiss, and eyes to smile,
whispers its own praises and breathes its own names of endearment.
Thus, love maketh the light to our dreams and planteth hope in the
midst of our sorrow. In darkness and in danger, too, love cometh to us
ever, ever, now