Catharine | Page 9

break, And all harmonious human tongues The Saviour's praises speak."
Young friend, you will need him as the great Physician, the Friend in sorrow, the Forerunner in the dark passages of life, the Conqueror of death, the Lord our Righteousness, and, all endearing names in one, Immanuel, God with us.
Parents, you will need him for your children. Children, you will need him when father and mother, one or both, have forsaken you, or, if alive, can only make you feel how little their fond love can do for you. When the name of father, cannot rouse you, nor your cold hand return the pressure of your father's hand, you will need a nearer, dearer friend, in the person of Him who loved you, and gave himself for you.
It has been one of the richest joys of my pastoral life, that I have sent to her mother in heaven her child, whom God had prepared for so early a departure out of this world. This ministry of reconciliation has been blessed to the salvation of my child. It should make me love the children of my pastoral charge more than ever, seek to gather them into the fold of Christ, that whole families, each like a constellation, may rise together in the firmament of heaven; and, in the mean time, that the members of every household, as they desert us one by one, may call back to us, and say, for the departed, "All are here."
God takes a family here and there, in a circle of acquaintances and friends, and greatly afflicts them; and thus he teaches others. As we look, therefore, upon the afflicted, we ought to say,--
"For us they languish, and for us they die; And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain?"
God is the same when he takes away the child, as when he laid that gift in our hands. Perhaps, indeed, the removal is really a greater exercise of love than the gift. It must seem good and acceptable in the sight of God, if, when we are bereaved, we employ ourselves occasionally in rehearsing before him the circumstances in his past goodness, which, at the time, made it exceedingly sweet and precious. Our debt of obligation for it is not yet fully paid; nor is it diminished at all by the removal of the blessing. Instead of abandoning ourselves to grief, we do well if we commune with God more frequently respecting his signal acts of favor in connection with the lost blessing.
But the memory of lost joys is always apt to depress the mind inordinately. We question whether it is really better to have
"loved and lost Than never to have loved at all."
Taking a future life into the account, surely no doubt can remain as to that question; but one who has really loved, will not be long in coming to the same conclusion, irrespective of the future. Must God abstain from making us exceedingly happy, because, forsooth, we shall be so unhappy when, in the exercise of the same goodness and wisdom which dictated the gift, he sees it best to take it away? If we love him more than we love his gifts, then the removal of them will make us love him more than ever.
"Though now He frowns, I'll praise the Almighty's name, And bless the source whence past enjoyments came."
We often hear it said, that every thing which happens to us is for our good, even in this world.--Many things happen to men, even to Christians, which are plainly not for their good in this life, though all things will, eventually, work together for good to them that love God. Some things, then, even here, are intended to be life-long sorrows and trials. Their object is reproof and constant admonition. We need another state of existence to explain the present. If that future state does not prove that earthly discipline has had its designed effect, the sorrows of this life show that God can bear to see us suffer, even when he foresees that no good will result to the sufferer. For while men suffer excruciatingly under bereavements, these sufferings often fail to make them better. God foresees all this. Hence God is able to look upon suffering which he sees will not be for the good of the afflicted.
If, now, his design in our trials (which pierced his heart before they reached ours) is utterly frustrated by our sins, the question will arise, whether the God who can bear to see us suffer for our good, which, nevertheless, he foresees will not be effected, will not be able to see us suffer as the fruit of our sins, and of our resistance to his designs. One who has endured much mental suffering cannot have failed to see, that God's parental