THE FIELDS OF THE FUTUttK. 



expression of your eye and the calm placidity of UK; 

 tones in which you address me. It is surely a ^ood 

 thin^ to l>e enabled to look forward through the clouds 

 and darkness of our present state of being to the calm 

 sunny fields of the future; to be assured that the lift; 

 which commenced as but yesterday, and whose events 

 seem huddled together as if they were the occurrences 

 of one short day, shall never, never terminate, but continue, 

 to go on, and on, and on, through the unreckoned and 

 ever-succeeding periods of an eternity, whose further 

 edge of boundary God Himself cannot perceive. And 

 is it not well, my dear inadarn, that as creatures possessed 

 of so quenchless a vitality, our affection should be fixed 

 on each other and on Him who occupies all the future 

 and all the past ? If we fix them on objects less en- 

 during than themselves a day of final separation must 

 come, and when they depart to their far country they 

 must go forth wounded and widowed, still, still 

 looking back and halting by the way, wishing, and 

 weeping, and longing, but - wishing and weeping and 

 longing in vain. How different must that journey 

 prove to those whose hearts have been prepared to love 

 their God, and whose affections have met and mingled 

 with those of their fellows ! They will go onward, as- 

 sured of meeting with Him, finding the stream of 1 1 is 

 brightness increasing the nearer they approach Him ; 

 and, reckoning the amount of their successions of hap- 

 piness by other periods of duration than those by which 

 in the lower world we measure our days of languor and 

 suffering, they shall say, " Our God is with us, and we 

 shall be joined by our friends early on the morrow." 

 Much as I sympathize with you and grieve for your 

 sufferings, I find there is much regarding you from 

 which to derive comfort. 



