The Dead - Page 2

which they will never need again; the fortitude in suffering which belonged only to this suffering state. Let us take from their dying hand that submission under affliction which they shall need no more in a world where affliction is unknown. Let us collect in our thoughts all those cheerful and hopeful sayings which they threw out from time to time as they walked with us, and string them as a rosary to be daily counted over. Let us test our own daily life by what must be their now perfected estimate; and as they once walked with us on earth, let us walk with them in heaven.

We may learn at the grave of our lost ones how to live with the living. It is a fearful thing to live so carelessly as we often do with those dearest to us, who may at any moment be gone for ever. The life we are living, the words we are now saying, will all be lived over in memory over some future grave. One remarks that the death of a child often makes parents tender and indulgent! Ah, it is a lesson learned of bitter sorrow! If we would know how to measure our work to living friends, let us see how we feel towards the dead. If we have been neglectful, if we have spoken hasty and unkind words, on which death has put his inevitable seal, what an anguish is that! But our living friends may, ere we know, pass from us; we may be to-day talking with those whose names to-morrow are to be written among the dead; the familiar household object of to-day may become sacred relics to-morrow. Let us walk softly; let us forbear and love; none ever repented of too much love to a departed friend; none ever regretted too much tenderness and indulgence, but many a tear has been shed for too much harshness and severity. Let our friends in heaven then teach us how to treat our friends on earth. Thus by no vain fruitless sorrow, but by a deeper self-knowledge, a tenderer and more sacred estimate of life, may our heavenly friends prove to us ministering spirits.

The triumphant apostle says to the Christian, "All things are yours--Life and Death." Let us not lose either; let us make Death our own; in a richer, deeper, and more solemn earnestness of life. So those souls which have gone from our ark, and seemed lost over the gloomy ocean of the unknown, shall return to us, bearing the olive-leaves of Paradise.

THE END.

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