But why particularize?  Many, very many who have walked with us side by side, in the sweet associations of life, are mingled with the long train that are buried beneath the “clods of the valley,” while there is a long train of living victims marching before the fearful blight to the open tomb.

No monarch sways his despotic sceptre over so numerous a population as this fell destroyer, in his unseen lurking places, “drinking up the very fountains of human life.”  But when will the sons of men learn to think? with all the blight of death around, cutting one down upon the right hand and another upon the left, the thoughtless crowd pass on, little seeming to heed their own mortality.  They look into the open grave, or watch the passing funeral perhaps with a momentary sadness, and turns lightly again to the active concerns of life, mingling in its gaities and dissipation, dancing on to the very whirlpool that is soon to engulf their frail bark, and bear it away where hope can never come.

Happy they who receive instruction from the revelations of God’s holy word, and imbibe its precepts into their heart; who, cleansed in a Saviour’s blood, are made recipients of his rich grace, and are thus prepared to enter that “land where death comes not.”

To Mrs. A——­ B——­,

On the Death of Her Child.

  “Are they not all ministering spirits?”

  “Mother, do not weep for me,
     Shining angels guide my way;
  And oft they lead me back to thee,
     Through realms of everlasting day.

  I may not burst the spirit’s tie,
     Or lift the dim, mysterious screen,
  That hides me from thy mortal eye;
     But I may visit thee unseen.

  Night comes not here; no evening shade
     Ere gathers round the throne of God;
  And when your setting sunbeams fade,
   I visit then your lone abode.

  The twilight hour was dear to me,
     With murmur’d tone of evening prayer;
  When with hands clasp’d upon your knee,
     And learned to lisp “Our Father” there.

  There I first caught the notes of praise,
     Flowing from a mother’s tongue. 
  Which through eternity shall raise
     A holy, high, angelic song.

  And then your thoughts are all of me,
    So softly nestling by your side;
  I wait to hear those trembling tones,
    In which you sang the day I died.

  Your patient watch beside my couch,
    You fain my ev’ry woe beguil’d;
  For anxiously, and tenderly,
    You ever watch’d your dying child.

  But all your efforts were in vain,—­
    Friends or physicians could not save;
  For ghastly death his mandate gave,
    To lay me in the silent grave.

  And scarce had rosy finger’d morn
    Unrolled her earliest tints of gray,
  To usher in the peaceful dawn
    Of that delightful Sabbath day,—­

  When, silently, the angel came,
    With upraised eye, and beck’ning hand,
  And gently folding in his arms,
    Bore me to the spirit land.