intimate the hope they entertained of being associated together in another life.

The next passage, which we adduce from the Old Testament, is still more apposite. It is the expression of David, on being told that his child was dead:-" Wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."* This is evidently spoken by the Psalmist as a ground of comfort: the thought of going where his child had gone consoled him under the present affliction. Yet it could have been no source of consolation to him, if he had not expected to meet and recognise his child again. Had David said, on this occasion-" I too shall die; my soul shall go to the place of departed spirits, and my body shall be buried in the ground; but my child shall never come back again to earth;"-this would have been a mere truism; it is no expression of hope, or comfort. But

* 2 Samuel, xii. 23.

when he says-I shall go to him, we understand him to say-"I shall see him again, I shall know him again, I shall embrace him again:"-and we then understand how he was comforted under the afflictive bereavement.

Where is the Christian parent who has wept over the early grave of an infant child, that does not participate in this feeling of holy David? Can the pious mother "forget her sucking child," when she has laid its little form in the ground, and feels that "of such is the kingdom of heaven;" and that its glorified spirit is rejoicing with other angels in the presence of HIм whose face they are always permitted to behold? Let her not sorrow as those who have no hope. She shall go to him

"And to her who bore him,
Her who long must weep,
Yet shall heaven restore him,
From his pale, sweet sleep!

'I'hose blue eyes of love and peace again Through her soul will shine undim'd by pain."*

To borrow the beautiful language of an eminent living divine:-"Tell us if Christianity does not throw a pleasing radiance around an infant's tomb? And should any parent who hears us, feel softened by the remembrance of the light that twinkled a few short months under his roof, and at the end of its little period expired; we cannot think that we venture too far, when we say that he has only to persevere in the faith, and in the following of the Gospel, and that very light will again shine upon him in heaven. The blossom which withered here upon its stalk, has been transplanted there to a place of endurance; and it will then gladden that eye, which now weeps out the agony of an affection that has been sorely wounded; and, in the name of Him, who, if on earth, would have wept along

* Mrs. Hemans' Burial of an Emigrant's Child.

with them, do we bid all believers present, to sorrow not even as others which have no hope; but to take comfort in the hope of that country, where there is no sorrow, and no separation."*

* Chalmers' Lectures on the Romans.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DOCTRINE FURTHER PROVED FROM THE

NEW TESTAMENT.

If the Old Testament affords us plain intimations of the truth of this doctrine, the New is still more express and clear. St. Paul, contrasting our present limited knowledge of the heavenly world, with that which we shall hereafter possess, says, "Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known ;"* which would seem to imply that the blessed in heaven would at least know each other; for how, otherwise, could it be said that we shall know even as we are

* 1 Cor. xiii. 12.