68 



sorrow in mourning them out of it. We rejoice and we 

 sorrow over them. It is a privilege to have a heart, an 

 overflowing heart, of human tender love. Father, that 

 son deserves well the tears you weep. Over you how 

 youthfully would he have wept — your eldest, darling 

 child ! But the sacred gift is yours to weep for him. 

 May God sanctify that unexpected, inexperienced sorrow. 

 The youth is a Christian youth. On his form of manly 

 beauty lies the death-betokening stillness; for he is not 

 there. He is with Christ ! At the time of death was he 

 with him in Paradise. Oh, how great the mercy which 

 brings our young men to the cross; which brought him 

 there. In the morning of life he renounced all for 

 his Saviour. Trained in the good old way, he walked in 

 it during the opening years of active manhood, pursued 

 religion as the chief end, and was thus prepared to enter 

 upon its everlasting rewards when God closed his earthly 

 course. Few meditations are more welcome to survivors 

 than those which are linked with efforts and prayers to 

 bring departed ones to Christ. The writer gratefully re- 

 members a solemn interview with this dear youth in a 

 retired corner of the beautiful garden out of sight except 

 from the All seeing. His mind was at that time, un- 

 known to me till then, concerned on religious subjects. 

 God afterwards brought him to a full knowledge of the 

 truth. He became a zealous Christian. He was in the 



