SHEWELL. AFFLICTIONS are the ministers of love, By Heaven appointed :- happy if they serve RESIGNATION. BISHOP KEN. PERMIT me, Father, like thy dearest Son, To cry, Not mine, but thy sole will be done; What to desire, I know not, or refuse: I ill may good, and bitter sweet, may think; But thine be done for thou omniscient art To know the wants and soundings of my heart. FRIENDS, even in heaven, one happiness would miss, Should they not know each other when in bliss. MRS. HEMANS. YE left me! and earth's flowers were dim With records of the past; And stars poured down another light Than o'er my youth they cast: 128 DETACHED THOUGHTS. Birds will not sing as once they sung, And mournful tones are in the wind, SOUTHEY. THEY sin who tell us love can die; In heaven ambition cannot dwell; Its holy flame forever burneth, From heaven it came, to heaven returneth; At times deceived, at times oppressed, It here is tried and purified, Then hath in heaven its perfect rest. But the harvest time of love is there. CHILDREN IN HEAVEN. ANONYMOUS. WHO are they whose little feet, Pacing life's dark journey through, Each the welcome "Come" awaits, Let the little travellers in. "While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."-2 SAMUEL Xii. A COTTAGER'S LAMENT. ANONYMOUS. SWEET, laughing child-the cottage door Thy merry step hath passed away, Thy mother by the fireside sits, And listens for thy call; 130 THE REAPER AND THE FLOWERS. THE REAPER AND THE FLOWERS. H. W. LONGFELLOW. THERE is a Reaper whose name is Death, He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, "Shall I have nought that is fair?" saith he; He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes, He kissed their drooping leaves; It was for the Lord of Paradise He bound them in his sheaves. "My Lord hath need of these flowerets gay," "Dear tokens of the earth are they, Where he was once a child. "They shall all bloom in fields of light, And saints, upon their garments white, And the mother gave, in tears and pain, She knew she should find them all again O, not in cruelty, not in wrath, ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT. HERVEY. YONDER white stone, emblem of the innocence it covers, informs the beholder of one who breathed out its tender soul almost in the instant of receiving it. There the peaceful infant, without so much as knowing what labor and vexation mean, "lies still, and is quiet it sleeps, and is at rest." (Job iii. 13.) Staying only to wash away its native impurity in the laver of regeneration, it bade a speedy adieu to time and terrestrial things. What did the little hasty - sojourner find so forbidding and disgustful in our upper world to occasion its precipitant exit? It is written, indeed, of its suffering Savior, that when he had tasted the vinegar mingled with gall, he would not drink, (Matt. xxvii. 34;) and did our new-come stranger begin to sip the cup of life, but, perceiving |