deep sweet voice impressed even the most thoughtless of his listeners with somewhat of his own earnest attention.
"It is good for me that I have been afflicted," may be said in many senses, but in none so truly as in a religious one. It is our own weakness that makes us seek for support—it is the sadness of earth that makes us look up to heaven. Fervently and confidingly did Emily pray that day; and who shall say that such prayers are vain? They may not be granted; but their faith has strengthened the soul, and their hope is left behind: and if the feelings of this world did intrude on her devotion, they were purified and exalted by thoughts of the world to come.
Amid the many signs of that immortality of which our nature is so conscious, none has the certainty, the conviction, of affection: we feel that love, which is stronger and better than life, was made to outlast it. In the memory that survives the lost and the dear, we have mute evidence of a power over the grave: and religion, while it holds forth the assurance of a blessed re-union, is acknowledged and answered from our own heart. We stand beside the tomb, but we look beyond it—
