RESIGNATION.

There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
But has one vacant chair!

The air is full of farewells to the dying,
And mournings for the dead:

The heart of Rachael, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted!

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mist and vapours;

Amid these earthly damps,

What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers,

May be heaven's distant lamps.

There is no Death! what seems so is transition;

This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.

She is not dead,-the child of our affection,-
But gone unto that school

Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,

Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives, whom we call dead.

Day after day we think what she is doing
In those bright realms of air;

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
Behold her grown more fair.

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
The bond which nature gives,

Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, May reach her where she lives.

Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when with raptures wild,

In our embraces we again enfold her,

She will not be a child;

But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion,

Clothed with celestial grace ;

And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
Shall we behold her face.

And though at times impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppressed,

The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean
That cannot be at rest,

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling

We may not wholly stay;

By silence sanctifying, not concealing,

The grief that must have way.

LONGFELLOW.

OUR DEPARTED FRIENDS.

WHEN We think of our departed friends, our souls seem often lost in the obscurity of their revealed state. We scarcely know where they are, or what they are engaged in. If they are in that abode of separate spirits which is called Paradise, yet we do not know where Paradise is. Is it near us, or is it very distant? Is it, as some have thought, in the "heart of the earth"? Are they the "things that are under the earth"? or are they in one of the planets, in the moon, or in the sun itself? Or are they anywhere within the circumference of that mighty universe which is vaulted by day with the blue empyrean, and by night with the glittering concave of the stars? But that empyrean seems itself without bound; and those stars seem so immeasurably distant, that the thought of either perplexes us. Are our departed friends beyond even these? Ah! then, how far, how hopelessly removed! The idea fills a void heart with nothing but the perplexity of distress and desire.

But it is not, evidently, the will of the Most

High, our Father, that His Children should suffer from such unsatisfied yearnings. We may sorrow, but not as those that are without hope. What, then, is the hope referred to? It is the second Advent of Christ, at that second Advent, He will bring back those that sleep in Him. (1 Thess. iv.) They sleep, then, in Him; they are in His keeping; hidden within the shady hollow of His mighty heart; for if He will bring them then, they must be under His keeping now. St. Paul has, in positive terms, assured us of this, when he says, that "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord";* and no less so when he declares by implication, that "to depart," and to be with Christ," is one and the same thing.

It is upon texts like these, that the Church grounds her strong assurance of the happiness of the saints departed. She believes, and as she believes she declares, that the spirits of the just are at once in the presence of GOD. The words of one of the last prayers in the order for the Burial of the Dead, assures us of this: "Almighty GOD, with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered † Phil. i. 23.

* 2 Cor. v. 8.