of complete legibility, only words in
capitals coming out distinctly. But these very words in capitals were
the cause of my anxious meditations. For on the one hand I read the name
of the "Rev. Joseph Brocklehurst, Rector," with, a line or two further
down, "Mary, wife of the _above_;" whilst on the other, which was to the
memory of my grandfather, my own name at full length, "William Preston
Grant," was underneath the only other word I could distinguish, and that
word was "_Below._" Many a Sunday did I ruminate upon the unpleasant
contrast which, to my mind, was suggested by the two prepositions
between the present condition of the Rev. Joseph Brocklehurst and that
of my grandfather; and it was not without some hesitation that I
revealed my perplexity to my father at last, by the abrupt inquiry, one
day on our way home from church, whether my grandfather had been a
_very_ wicked man. Greatly surprised were both my parents at this
unlooked-for question, and I believe not a little amused at the train of
reasoning which had led me to it; but they took an early opportunity of
taking me into the church, not on a Sunday, and permitting me to go near
to the tablets, pointing out the connecting words which were not
legible, and which supplied a full explanation of all that I wanted to
know, and showing me that the _below_ referred to the position of the
family vault under the church, and the _above_ to the relative position
of the Rev. J. Brocklehurst's name to that of his wife.

Often after that explanation I thought, as I looked at the tablets, of
the words my father said to me at the time: "Willie, there are many
things in God's dealings with his children that are hard to understand
_here_; by-and-by, when we see things nearer, in the light of eternity,
we shall find out that our difficulty has just been because here we see
in part--as you did the inscriptions--but _then_ we shall see face to
face, and know even as we are known."

There was another monumental tablet about which I thought a great deal,
which preached to me a silent sermon as often as I looked at it. Under
the name and date of birth and death of the person it commemorated were
the words, "_Prepare to meet thy God._" I spent a long time looking for
them in my Bible, and thought a great deal about the verse when I had
found it; wondering whether the young midshipman, son of one of the
rectors, upon whose monument it had been engraved, had thought about
them t