Heaven is greatly made up of little children, sweet buds that have never blown, or which death has plucked from a mother's bosom to lay on his own cold breast, just when they were expanding, flower-like, from the sheath, and opening their engaging beauties in the budding time and spring of life. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." How sweet these words by the cradle of a dying infant! They fall like balm drops on our bleeding heart, when we watch the ebbing of that young life, as wave after wave breaks feebler, and the sinking breath gets lower and lower, till with a gentle sigh, and a passing quiver of the lip, our child now leaves its body, lying like an angel asleep, and ascends to the beatitudes of heaven and the bosom of God. Indeed it may be, that God does with his heavenly garden, as we do with our gardens. He may chiefly stock it from nurseries, and select for transplanting what is yet in its young and tender age--flowers before they have bloomed, and trees ere they begin to bear. Rev. Dr. Guthrie.
Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduc'd to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!
And their sun does never shine,
And their fields are bleak and bare,
And their ways are fill'd with thorns:
It is eternal winter there.
For where-e'er the sun does shine,
And where-e'er the rain does fall,
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.
by William Blake
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I know the night is near at hand:
The mists lie low on hill and bay.
The Autumn sheaves are dewless, dry;
But I have had the day.
Yes, I have had, dear Lord, the day;
When at Thy call I have the night,
Brief be the twilight as I pass
From light to dark, from dark to light.
by Silas Weir Mitchell.
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Dwellers on the Mississippi and Missouri, and in the back woods of Canada and the prairies of the West, are there. Millions from the Andes and the isles of the Pacific, from the mountains of Thibet and the cities of China; from every jungle of India and from every pagoda of Hindostan, the untutored Arab and the uncultivated Druse, and the 'tribes of the weary foot,' the children of Salem are there, * * and Augustine and Luther are there also, and many, we in our uncharitableness, or bigotry, or exclusiveness, or ignorance, excluded from Heaven, will be there also; and our sires and sons and babes and parents will be there, completed circles never again to be broken, and their united voices will give utterance to their deep and enduring gratitude "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and that hath made us kings and priests unto God, even the Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen." Rev. Dr. Cumming.
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