Nothing is so completely beyond the power of death as a noble love. Parting can shatter only its outward shell. Under that strange touch, love in its inmost recesses kindles and glows with a divine fire. Whom of the living do we love as we love our dead? Whom else do we hold so sacredly and so surely? Not as a memory of a lost past, —nothing in our present is so real as they, and toward our unknown future we go with a great and solemn gladness, beckoned by their presence. S. Merriam. Geo. happy. But and you will This is the change that comes. We are not afraid any more of our Father. We are not all if he says go, you will know that it is well, not be afraid. You know it is the Father. God, that is far off-He is our Father. Do not say And the little Pilgrim's voice echoed away through the great firmament to other worlds. And it breathed over the earth like some one saying Courage! to those whose hearts were failing; and it dropped down into the great confusion and traffic of the land of darkness, and startled many, like the voice of a child calling and calling, and never ceasing, Come! and come! and come! Mrs. Oliphant. The leaves, though thick, are falling: one by one Yet think thee not their beauteous tints less fair Than when they hung so gayly o'er thy head; But rather find thee eyes, and look thee there Where now thy feet so heedless o'er them tread, And thou shalt see, where wasting now they lie, The unseen hues of immortality.-Jones Very.> PART I. - LIFE AND DEATH. A Chant. "Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini." Who is the Angel that cometh? Life! Let us not question what he brings, Under the shade of his mighty wings, Are his secrets told; One by one, Lit by the rays of each morning's sun, In the name of the Lord!" Who is the Angel that cometh? But do not shudder and do not fear; For a kingly presence is drawing near, Is his flashing steel, Cold and bright The smile that comes like a starry light Adelaide Procter. De Profundis. The face which, duly as the sun, The tongue which, like a stream, could run The heart which, like a staff, was one And yet my days go on, go on. And cold before my summer's done, And fallen too low for special fear, While the tears drop, my days go on. A Voice reproves me thereupon, More sweet than Nature's when the drone Than when the rivers overleap The shuddering pines, and thunder on. God's Voice, not Nature's. Night and noon He reigns above, he reigns alone; For us, whatever's undergone, I trust thee while my days go on. Whatever's lost, it first was won: That Heaven's new wine might show more clear. |