'WEEP NOT FOR HER.'

WEEP not for her, there is no cause for woe,
She died before the heart had learned to sin,
Before the cheek had lost its summer glow,
Or winter chilled the monitor within;
The fairest flowers of earth do quickly fade,
Ere Sorrow's cruel hand is on them laid-
Weep not for her.

THE DEPARTURE OF OUR FRIENDS WILL RENDER OUR OWN DEATH LESS PAINFUL.

IT is our duty to commit our fatherless children, and friendless relatives, to God. And some have been enabled cheerfully to do this on a dying bed. Luther could say, 'Lord, thou hast given me a wife and children. I have little to leave them. Father of the fatherless, and Judge of the widow, do thou nourish, teach, and keep them.' But every Christian hath not Luther's faith. Those then whose dearest friends have gone before them, are in some respects privileged. As their ties to earth are weakened, they may hope to find it less difficult to die.

PRAYER.

PRAY!- for over life at last
Shall the night of death be cast,
And around the waiting tomb
Gather more than midnight gloom,
Unless He, the strong to save,
Crownéd Victor o'er the grave,
Guide and guard the trembling soul,
As the billows round it roll!
O, with watching and with prayer,
Let us for that hour prepare,
So for us shall be the rest
Of the sanctified and blest!

DEEP calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. Yet the Lord will command his loving kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me ? hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance and my God.

PSALM XLII.

TO A BEREAVED FATHER.

ERSKINE.

I CANNOT, I dare not say, weep not. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus, and, surely, he allows you to weep; surely, there is a 'needs be' that you feel a heaviness under such a trial. But 0, let hope and joy mitigate your heaviness. I know not how this, or a former trial, shall work for your good, but it is enough that God knows. He that said, 'All things shall work together for good to them that love God,' excepts not from this promise the sorest trial. You devoted your son to God; you cannot doubt that he accepted the surrender. If he has been hid in the chamber of the grave from the evil of sin, and from the evil of suffering, let not your eye be evil, when God is good. What you chiefly wished for him, and prayed on his behalf, was spiritual and heavenly blessings. If the greatest thing you wished for is accomplished, at the season and in the manner Infinite Wisdom saw best, refuse not to be comforted; you know not what work and joy have been waiting for

him in that world, where God's 'servants shall serve him.' Should you sorrow immoderately when you have such ground of hope that he, and his other parent, are rejoicing in what you lament? I know that nature will feel; and I believe suppressing its emotions in such cases is not profitable, either to soul or body; but I trust, though you mourn, God will keep you from murmuring, and that you shall have to glory in your tribulation and infirmity, while the power of Christ is manifested thereby.

UNHAPPY one! thou callest in vain unto the dead to awake. The sleep of the body is dreamless and eternal. Cold and white as the marble is that face of beauty: as still that breast which heaves with deep affection. Turn to the heavenly Helper! Between God and thee was her love divided. O flee to HIM in thy sorrow, and he will give thee consolation. He himself hath drunk of every cup of bitterness: he will have sympathy with thee in thy anguish; he will heal thy broken heart.

WALTER HAWTHORNE.

TO A BEREAVED MOTHER.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

SURE, to the mansions of the blest
When infant innocence ascends,
Some angel, brighter than the rest,
The spotless spirit's flight attends.
On wings of ecstasy they rise,

Beyond where worlds material roll;
Till some fair sister of the skies
Receives the unpolluted soul.

That inextinguishable beam
With dust united at our birth,
Sheds a more dim, discolored gleam
The more it lingers upon earth.
Closed in this dark abode of clay,
The stream of glory faintly burns: --

Not unobserved, the lucid ray

To its own native fount returns.

But when the LORD of mortal breath
Decrees his bounty to resume,
And points the silent shaft of death

Which speeds an infant to the tomb

No passion fierce, nor low desire,

Has quenched the radiance of the flame;

Back to its God the living fire

Reverts unclouded as it came.