Those who are with God are the happiest. I do not feel troubled about them. I am only anxious that those who remain with me, may so live, that by and by, they may be with him too."
"The most lovely and promising of my children, have been smitten, said a mourning parent. If it were not so, I could have borne it better." But did not the very goodness and piety, which endeared them to you, render them more fit to be companions of the pure spirits around the Throne? Their virtues, their loveliness, seem indeed to have made your loss the greater. But would you have had them less virtuous, less lovely? You do not grudge, that the gift should have been in some degree worthy of Him who resumed it. Oh no! You cannot regret that their fair promise of excellence was unclouded, when they went down to the dust.
I once saw a sight, mournful, yet beautiful. Twin infants, in the same coffin. Their waxen brows had been so much alike, that only the eye of domestick intimacy could distinguish them. One, was suddenly wounded by a dart from those countless diseases, which are in ambush around the first years of life. The other moaned, and cried, incessantly for his companion. Nothing could divert or soothe him. But Death united them. So soon did the survivor sicken, that his brother waited for him in the coffin. There
