Part 63

"Parting and forgetting? What faithful heart can do these? Our great thoughts, our great affections, the Truths of our life, never leave us. Surely they cannot separate from our consciousness; shall follow it whithersoever that shall go; and are of their nature divine and immortal."

THACKERAY.

"I can only say that I sympathise with your grief, and if faith means anything at all it is trusting to those instincts, or feelings, or whatever they may be called, which assure us of some life after this."

Tennyson--a Memoir, by his Son.

"What is it when a child dies? It is the great head-master calling that child up into his own room, away from all the under-teachers, to finish his education under his own eye, close at his feet. The whole thought of a child's growth and development in heaven instead of here on earth, is one of the most exalting and bewildering on which the mind can rest."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

Death of Young Children

SEPTEMBER 5

"Nothing is left or lost, nothing of good Or lovely; but whatever its first springs Has drawn from God, returns to Him again."

On an Early Death, TRENCH.

"When one comes to the loss of young children--a sad perplexity--let it not be forgotten that they were given. If in the hour of bitterest grief it were asked of a bereaved mother whether she would prefer never to have possessed in order that she might never have lost--her heart would be very indignant. No little child has ever come from God and stayed a brief while in some human home--to return again to the Father--without making glad that home and leaving behind some trace of heaven. A family had counted themselves poorer without those quaint sayings, those cunning caresses, that soft touch, that sudden smile. This short visit was not an incident: it was a benediction. The child departs, the remembrances, the influence, the associations remain. If one should allow us to have Sarto's Annunciation for a month, we would thank him: when he resumed it for his home he would not take everything, for its loveliness of maid and angel is now ours for ever. And if God recalls the child He lent, then let us thank Him for the loan, and consider that what made that child the messenger of God--its purity, modesty, trustfulness, gladness--has passed into our soul."

The Potter's Wheel, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

The Dead

SEPTEMBER 6

"The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still:-- They have forged our chains of being for good or ill And their invisible hands these hands yet hold. Our perishable bodies are the mould In which their strong imperishable will-- Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil-- Hath grown incorporate through dim time untold.

"Vibrations infinite of life in death, As a star's travelling light survives its star! So may we hold our lives, that when we are The fate of those who then will draw this breath, They shall not drag us to their judgment bar, And curse the heritage which we bequeath."

MATHILDE BLIND.

"We are learning, by the help of many teachers, the extent and the authority of the dominion which the dead exercise over us, and which we ourselves are shaping for our descendants.

"We feel, as perhaps it was impossible to feel before, how at every moment influences from the past enter our souls, and how we in turn scatter abroad that which will be fruitful in the distant future. It is becoming clear to us that we are literally parts of others and they of us."

Bishop WESTCOTT.

The Dead

SEPTEMBER 7

"I with uncovered head Salute the sacred dead, Who went and who return not. Say not so!

* * * * *

We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. Blow, trumpets, all your exaltations blow! For never shall their aureoled presence lack: I see them muster in a gleaming row, With ever-youthful brows that nobler show; We find in our dull road their shining track: In every nobler mood We feel the orient of their spirit glow, Part of our life's unalterable good, Of all our saintlier aspiration: They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Beautiful evermore, and with the rays Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation."

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

The Dead

SEPTEMBER 8