Chapter 2

It has been my privilege to see, in this child, an example of true preparation for death, which begins before the expectation of dying brings the least discredit, or breath of suspicion, upon our motives in attending to the subject of religion. Preparation for death consists in justification by faith, extending its influence into the whole character, to bring us under the rule of Christ. The fruit of this is friendship with God, the confidence of love, knowing whom we have believed, with the persuasion of our having committed to him an infinite trust, and that he will keep it with covenant faithfulness. So when death comes and knocks at the door, it is true the heart beats quicker, as it is apt to do whoever knocks there; for, to give up one's hold on life, to turn and look eternal things full in the face, to think of meeting God, and of having your endless condition fixed, summons the whole of natural and acquired fortitude; and only they who have an unseen arm to lean upon at such a time, endure in that trial. Then past experience comes in with her powerful aid: "I have fought a good fight;" "the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps;" "remember, O Lord, how I have walked before thee." Thus there is something to make you feel that your justification, by free grace, has the evidence afforded by its fruits; and the preparation to die may be likened to that of which the Saviour speaks when he says, "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit." I have seen it, have watched it, have studied it, in the dying scenes of this child. Hers was not the experience of the sinner, pulled suddenly from the waves by a hand which he had for a long time, nay, always, spurned; but her dying was an arrival at the end of a voyage, the coming home of a good child to long-expecting hearts and arms. We said one to another around her dying bed,--yes, we had composure to say, as we watched that parting scene, that fading cloud, that sinking gale, that dying wave, that shutting eye of day,--"Think of such a poor, helpless, dying creature, if, in the sense intended by those words, she should 'fall into the hands of the living God.'" And we glorified God in her. Never did I see and feel more deeply, by contrast, the folly of trusting to a death-bed repentance, to repair the errors of a wasted life. It is a deliberate attempt at fraud upon the Most High; it is folly; for the risk is fearful, and could we obtain salvation, how mercenarily!--and what a memorial would it be in heaven of loss, instead of being "a crown of righteousness!" They who are all their lifetime ignorant, being unfortunately deprived of opportunity for religious instruction, may with wonder and joy accept the surprising news of pardon, through Christ, on a dying bed, and soar to the same heights with apostles in their praises of redeeming love. But if we hear of salvation by Christ all our life long, and know our duty, but prefer the pleasures of sin for a season, and think that in the swellings of Jordan we shall find peace and safety, our conduct deserves all the opprobrious names which are heaped upon it by inspired tongues and pens. We who are parents must teach our children that religion does not consist merely in being pardoned, and, if pardoned, no matter whether early or late; but that it is the first, the constant, the all-pervading rule of life, God and his service the chief end of man, and that the pleasures of religion are the sweetest pleasures, hallowing all others which are innocent, and leading us to reject those, and only those, which would be unsuitable or injurious, even if religious custom did not forbid them. We must know this, and practise upon it, ourselves; else, how can we expect the children to believe it?

The exceeding relief which a timely preparation for death by an early consecration of herself to God, imparted to this child and to us, was felt in this, that she and we had no distressing thoughts at her total inability, for a long time, to join in prayer with others, or to be conversed with in any way that excited much feeling. The diseased throat, where, as we all know, our emotions, even in health and strength, make such interference with our comfort, prevented her from joining in any religious exercises, because she would then be liable to the excitement of feelings which, in the way just intimated, would have injured her. With such affections of the bronchial passages, efforts of mind which are not spontaneous are sometimes agony. Connected endeavors to follow conversation and prayer were impossible, and she told me, on saying this, that she took great comfort from a remark, in a book, addressed to a sick person--"Do not think, but pray." She prayed much herself; her thoughts, too, were prayers, in certain cases. Now, in that weakened condition, what could she have done, and what would have been her father's feelings, had she not, in health and strength, arrived at such a state of religious knowledge and experience as to remove anxiety for her spiritual welfare, and to make us feel that she had Christ in her, the hope of glory? When the cry was made, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh," she arose and trimmed her lamp, and had oil in her vessel with her lamp. Wealth could not purchase the relief and satisfaction which this gave to her friends;--so truly is religion called the "pearl of great price;" so literally true are the Saviour's words, "But one thing is needful." It is the greatest blessing which a young person can bestow on Christian parents, to be a Christian; and what its value is to surviving parents, ask those who sorrow as they that have no hope. When a young Christian comes to die, he testifies that he lost nothing, but gained every thing, with eternal life, by being a Christian in his early years. I can imagine what this child would say to one and another of her young friends who may read these pages, and how she would seek to persuade them, as the first great duty of their existence, and for their best good here, and for their everlasting peace, to choose the good part, which will never be taken away from them.

Her funeral was a scene from which many went away rejoicing in God; and not a few date new progress in the Christian life from it, by means of the new and striking illustration which they there had of the Saviour's power and love. The Choir struck the key note of heaven in their opening strains, by chanting, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing." They gave us, too, her favorite song, by which she was remembered in several circles, at home and abroad, before she was sick, and the words of which, now, seem to have had a prophetic meaning from her lips:--

"I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger; I can tarry, I can tarry but a night;"--

which was sung at the funeral with a sweetness which added much to the associations with it in our minds; and in the closing hymn, how strange it seemed, at a funeral, to hear the singers, though by our own request and though in accordance with all which had passed, bid us

"Proclaim abroad his name, Tell of his matchless fame, What wonders done! Shout through hell's dark profound, Let the whole earth resound, Till the high heavens rebound, The victory's won;"--

and to hear them, as they cried one to another, saying,--

"All hail the glorious day, When, through the heavenly way, Lo, He shall come; While they who pierced him wail; His promise shall not fail; Saints, see your King prevail; Come, dear Lord, come."

For those ministrations of love and tenderness in the last, sad offices to the dead, which no wealth could buy, repeated now by some of the same hands several times in my dwelling, there are no words of gratitude adequate to the great debt of love. The mothers of my church, who met weekly with her mother for prayer, remembered her child, and provided nurses for her, to her own unspeakable comfort and our great relief. Friends and strangers, touched with her protracted sickness, poured blessings around her couch; fruits, in their season, and when out of their season, of what almost unearthly beauty! and flowers which, with the fruits, made that sick room seem like the garden which the Lord planted in Eden. Such have been the alleviations of pain and suffering, the comforts, and even the pleasures, and above all the rich spiritual consolations and joys, and the more than conquering faith of the dying hour,--such a union in all this of Jesus and his friends,--that I have made the case of the ruler of the synagogue mine, of whom, as he went to his afflicted house, it is said, "And Jesus arose and followed him, and so did his disciples." They will go wherever Jesus leads the way; and he will lead the way wherever there is a lamb to be folded in his bosom.

There were not wanting those who lent me their sepulchre, in the city, for a season--a kindness always peculiar and affecting, but also needful in this instance, because of the great snows which made the roads to Mount Auburn impassable for several days. Nor can I forget that, when Saturday evening closed upon us, words and tokens of kindness came from the younger members of my congregation, who had provided for the last earthly things which the precious dust of their young friend required; and so they seemed to bid me rest from all care and thoughtfulness, upon the "Sabbath day, according to the commandment." All which should increase my feelings of sympathy and kindness for the sick, and especially for the sick poor, whose rooms, and whose dying hours, and whose griefs, are oftentimes in such contrast to those into which divine and human loving kindness seem striving to pour their abundant consolations. As the family retired from the dying scene, and were weeping together, a father came to my door, in that great snow-storm, to say that his son, the young man, not a member of my congregation, whom I had several times visited, was near his end, and would like to see me. Stranger comparatively though he was, and impassable as the streets were by any vehicle, and almost by foot passengers, my gratitude for the sweet and peaceful end of my own dear child, and for her undoubted admission to the realms of bliss, was such, that, within an hour or two, I forced my way to a distant part of the city, to assist another departing spirit for its flight. This heart has no more fortitude, nor has it less of natural affection and sensibility, than ordinarily falls to the lot of men; hence those consolations must have been great, that support and strength equal to the day, that hope concerning my child an anchor sure and steadfast, which enabled me thus to go from her clay, just cold, to aid a passing spirit in obtaining like precious faith with hers, and the same inheritance. My motive in thus lifting a little of the veil, or in placing a light behind the transparency, of my private feelings, I trust will be seen to be, that I may comfort others with the comfort wherewith I was comforted of God.

But there awaits me a blessing, with a joy, surpassing all that has gone before. "My daughter is even now dead; but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live." From her grave, which was soon made by the side of kindred dust, Jesus will raise her up at the last day; her voice will come to that body; her youthful beauty will be reestablished by her likeness to Christ's own glorious body; she will lean upon my arm again; the separation and absence will enhance the joy of meeting; we shall say, How like a hand-breadth was the separation! We shall see reasons full of wisdom and love for the sickness and the early death. We shall part no more. All this has more than once made me say, and sing,--

"O, for this love, let rocks and hills Their lasting silence break, And all harmonious human tongues The Saviour's praises speak."

Young friend, you will need him as the great Physician, the Friend in sorrow, the Forerunner in the dark passages of life, the Conqueror of death, the Lord our Righteousness, and, all endearing names in one, Immanuel, God with us.

Parents, you will need him for your children. Children, you will need him when father and mother, one or both, have forsaken you, or, if alive, can only make you feel how little their fond love can do for you. When the name of _father_, cannot rouse you, nor your cold hand return the pressure of your father's hand, you will need a nearer, dearer friend, in the person of Him who loved you, and gave himself for you.

It has been one of the richest joys of my pastoral life, that I have sent to her mother in heaven her child, whom God had prepared for so early a departure out of this world. This ministry of reconciliation has been blessed to the salvation of my child. It should make me love the children of my pastoral charge more than ever, seek to gather them into the fold of Christ, that whole families, each like a constellation, may rise together in the firmament of heaven; and, in the mean time, that the members of every household, as they desert us one by one, may call back to us, and say, for the departed, "All are here."

God takes a family here and there, in a circle of acquaintances and friends, and greatly afflicts them; and thus he teaches others. As we look, therefore, upon the afflicted, we ought to say,--

"For us they languish, and for us they die; And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain?"

God is the same when he takes away the child, as when he laid that gift in our hands. Perhaps, indeed, the removal is really a greater exercise of love than the gift. It must seem good and acceptable in the sight of God, if, when we are bereaved, we employ ourselves occasionally in rehearsing before him the circumstances in his past goodness, which, at the time, made it exceedingly sweet and precious. Our debt of obligation for it is not yet fully paid; nor is it diminished at all by the removal of the blessing. Instead of abandoning ourselves to grief, we do well if we commune with God more frequently respecting his signal acts of favor in connection with the lost blessing.

But the memory of lost joys is always apt to depress the mind inordinately. We question whether it is really better to have

"loved and lost Than never to have loved at all."

Taking a future life into the account, surely no doubt can remain as to that question; but one who has really loved, will not be long in coming to the same conclusion, irrespective of the future. Must God abstain from making us exceedingly happy, because, forsooth, we shall be so unhappy when, in the exercise of the same goodness and wisdom which dictated the gift, he sees it best to take it away? If we love him more than we love his gifts, then the removal of them will make us love him more than ever.

"Though now He frowns, I'll praise the Almighty's name, And bless the source whence past enjoyments came."

We often hear it said, that every thing which happens to us is for our good, even in this world.--Many things happen to men, even to Christians, which are plainly not for their good in this life, though all things will, eventually, work together for good to them that love God. Some things, then, even here, are intended to be life-long sorrows and trials. Their object is reproof and constant admonition. We need another state of existence to explain the present. If that future state does not prove that earthly discipline has had its designed effect, the sorrows of this life show that God can bear to see us suffer, even when he foresees that no good will result to the sufferer. For while men suffer excruciatingly under bereavements, these sufferings often fail to make them better. God foresees all this. Hence God is able to look upon suffering which he sees will not be for the good of the afflicted.

If, now, his design in our trials (which pierced his heart before they reached ours) is utterly frustrated by our sins, the question will arise, whether the God who can bear to see us suffer for our good, which, nevertheless, he foresees will not be effected, will not be able to see us suffer as the fruit of our sins, and of our resistance to his designs. One who has endured much mental suffering cannot have failed to see, that God's parental relation to us is not analogous to that of parent and child among men. It terminates in the relations of governor and of judge; being, indeed, from the first, included in those relations. This is not so in our earthly relationship. God sees men suffer as no earthly parent could; he inflicts pain as no earthly parent should. All is for our profit; but if that object fails through our perverseness, we are instructed, by our experience, that if God can look on mental anguish and not relieve it, because he seeks an ulterior good, the punishment of sin, the natural and just consequences of disobedience to the great laws of the universe, may be, in their extended impression, another ulterior good, which will warrant the same mental sufferings after death, and forever.

Could I be permitted, therefore, I would take by the hand every bereaved father whom so great an affliction as the death of a child has not succeeded in bringing into a state of preparation for heaven, and kindly ask how he expects to bear a final and endless separation. "If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?" God describes to his ancient people one of the great sorrows which will happen to them, if they forsake him, in their separations, by captivity, from their children: "Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing, for them all the day long; and there shall be no might in thy hand." Pains of absence, sudden convulsions of feeling at the remembered looks, form, words, and motions of a loved one, sometimes are as when men feel the earth quaking under them; and then, again, they entirely prostrate us, for the moment, like a tornado. Homesickness in a foreign land,--an ocean stretching between us and the objects of our love--is an admonition to us with respect to future, endless separations. The hopeless death of a child has sometimes had the effect to change the long-established faith of a parent with regard to future retribution; all the acknowledged principles of interpretation, all the results of meditation and prayer, the theory of the divine government which has been built up in the soul, till it became identified with personal consciousness, the whole analogy of faith,--all, have been swept away by the overmastering power of parental love for one who, when he died, left his friends to sorrow as they that have no hope. Now, supposing a parent to fail of heaven, and to retain his instinctive parental feelings, the endless separation between him and his family will be a source of sorrow which needs only to be kept up, by an ever-living memory, to constitute all which is pictured in the boldest metaphors of inspired tongues and pens. A father in disgrace, or under ignominy, suffers intensely when he sees or thinks of his children, provided his natural sensibilities are not destroyed. A father punished, hereafter, by his Redeemer and Judge, a father banished from the company of heaven, knowing that his family are there, and that if his influence had had its full effect, they would all have perished with him,--or a father with a part of his children with him in perdition, the wife and mother with one or more of the children in heaven,--is a picture of woe which nothing but timely repentance and faith in Christ may prevent from being a reality in the experience of some who read these lines. Can it be true, as Bishop Hall says, that "to be happy is not so sweet a state as it is miserable to have been happy"? O man, if you have a child in heaven, think that, among the sweet influences of divine love, there probably is no more powerful motive to draw your affections towards God, than that glimpse which you sometimes seem to have of this child's face, on which heaven has traced its lineaments of peace and bliss; or that sudden whisper of a gentle, child-like voice, now and then heard by the ear of fancy, persuading you to be a Christian. Do not let the world, or shame, or procrastination, lead you to resist such efforts of almighty love to save you. He who has had a child saved by Christ, and will not be himself a Christian,--what more can God do to save him?

The breaking up of our homes is one of the mysteries of God's providence. The last thing, perhaps, which we might suppose would be allowed, is, the removal of a mother from a family of young children. This being so frequent, we cease to wonder at any other dispensations; we conclude that separations are to be made, regardless of any and every seeming necessity and endearment. "Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of our lives." The conviction is forced upon us that there is another world, for which we must make all our calculations. "There is a better world," said the distinguished William Wirt, after the death of his daughter, in 1831,--"there is a better world, of which I have thought too little. To that world she has gone, and thither my affections have followed her. This was Heaven's design. I see and feel it as distinctly as if an angel had revealed it. I often imagine that I can see her beckoning me to the happy world to which she has gone. She was my companion, my office companion, my librarian, my clerk. My papers now bear her indorsement. She pursued her studies in my office, by my side, sat with me, walked with me, was my inexpressibly sweet and inseparable companion,--never left me but to go and sit with her mother. We knew all her intelligence, all her pure and delicate sensibility, the quickness and power of her perceptions, her seraphic love. She was all love, and loved all God's creation, even the animals, trees, and plants. She loved her God and Saviour with an angel's love, and died like a saint."[A]

[Footnote A: Kennedy's Life of William Wirt--letter to Judge Carr.]

About the same time, he writes to his wife,--

"I want only my blessed Saviour's assurance of pardon and acceptance to be at peace. I wish to find no rest short of rest in him,--Let us both look up to that heaven--where our Saviour dwells, and from which he is showing us the attractive face of our blessed and happy child, and bidding us prepare to come to her, since she can no more visibly come to us. I have no taste now for worldly business. I go to it reluctantly. I would keep company only with my Saviour and his holy book. I dread the world, the strife, and contention, and emulation of the bar; yet I will do my duty--this is part of my religion."

In December, 1833, another daughter died; but he writes,--

"I look upon life as a drama, bearing the same sort, though not the same degree, of relation to eternity, as an hour spent at the theatre, and the fictions there exhibited ... do to the whole of real life. Nor is there any thing in this passing pageant worth the sorrow that we lavish on it. Now, when my children or friends leave me, or when I shall be called to leave them, I consider it as merely parting for the present visit, to meet under happier circumstances, when we shall part no more."[B]

[Footnote B: Kennedy's Life of William Wirt--letter to Judge Cabell.]

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