tent of clay, are gathered together, around the altar of immortality.
We sometimes see parents suddenly bereft of all their children. To have their most precious treasures swept utterly away, and find that home desolate, Which was wont to resound with the voice of young affection, and the tones of innocent mirth, is a sorrow which none can realize, save those who bear it. All human sympathies fall short of the occasion. The admonition not to mourn, is misplaced. "Jesus wept." Is not this a sufficient sanction for the mourner's tear? He who appoints such discipline, never intended that we should be insensible to it, or that we should gird ourselves in the armour of pride to meet it, or seal up the fountain of tears, when he maketh the heart soft.
If we attempt to comfort those, who lament the extinction of an whole family, cut down in their tender years, what shall we say? We are constrained to acknowledge that earth has no substitute for such a loss. Dear afflicted friends, ask it not of earth, but look to Heaven. Is not the interval of separation short? How soon will the years fleet, ere you lie down to slumber in the same narrow bed appointed for all the living. If they died in the Redeemer, and you live in obedience to his commands, how rapturous will be the everlasting embrace in which you shall
