man's bosom against another, when, ere long, nature
will plant flowers upon their common grave. "Let not the sun go down
upon our wrath," when his morning beams may search our accustomed places
for one or both of us, in vain.

Thus, if the dead teach us to regard more dutifully the living, they
will accomplish for us a most beautiful discipline. Their departure may
also serve another end. It may teach us the great lessons of patience
and resignation. We have been surrounded by many blessings, and yet
perhaps, have indulged in fretfulness. A slight loss has irritated us.
We have chafed at ordinary disappointments, at little interruptions in
the current of our prosperity. We have been in the habit of murmuring.
And now this great grief has overtaken us, that we may see at what
little things we have complained,--that we may learn that there is a
meaning in trouble which should make us calm,--that we had no right to
these gifts, the privation of which has offended us, but that all
have flowed from that mercy which we have slightly acknowledged, and
peevishly accused. This great sorrow has stricken us, piercing through
bone and marrow, in order to reach our hearts, and touch the springs of
spiritual life within us, that henceforth, we may look upon all sorrow
in a new light. Little troubles have only disturbed the surface of our
nature, making it uneasy, and tossing it into fretful eddies; this heavy
calamity, like a mighty wind, has plunged into the very depths, and
turned up the foundations, leaving us, at length, purified and serene. I
believe we shall find it to be the general testimony that those who have
the least trouble are the loudest complainers; while, often, the souls
that have been fairly swept and winnowed by sorrow are the most patient
and Christ-like. The pressure of their woe has broken down all ordinary
reliances, and driven them directly to God, where they rest in sweet
submission and in calm assurance. Such is the discipline which may be
wrought out for us by the departure of those we love. Such, and other
spiritual results, their vanishing may secure for us, which we never
could have gained by their presence; and so it may be said by some
departing friend,--some one most dear to our hearts,--in a reverent
sense, as the Master said to his disciples, "It is expedient for you
that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto
you."

As I have already touched upon the region of speculatio