pleasure-secking or money-making or self-seeking if the influence of children were removed. Even their departure makes the world assume something of that true aspect which God has given it in his word, and heaven is anchored to many a heart more peacefully and hopefully because of the children that are there. Many a time has the Great Shepherd led his children nearer the eternal world by carrying a lamb or two ahead as fresh challenges to the parents to follow after. "A little child shall lead them." We should take the language of the Shunamite woman to express our allegiance to the Divine government in the day of our bereavement. "It is well" with child, father, mother-not because parental instinct had perished, or because the child was less loved than before. But it is well, because God's ways are always right-because another has been delivered from the evil that is in the world-because it is no small thing that God puts everlasting honor upon our children, because it is not a thing for comfortless grief that Jesus suffers little children to come to him.

The keeper of the vineyard takes away the twig for the deeper rooting and fruitfulness of the vine, and we know his wisdom and answer not a word.

Is it not time that the family should be gathering on the hill-tops of glory? That your house on high be furnished-that your mansion should be decorated with those blossoms which have been your delight on earth? May their going be the means of deeper meditation on the excellence of eternal things.

HOME BEREAVEMENTS.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

Remarks made at the funeral of a child in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn.

WE are joined together, many of us, by a common experience. Many of us have met in each others' houses and in each others' company on just such errands of grief and sympathy and Christian triumph as this. How many of us have sent children forward; and how many of us feel to-day that all things are for our sakes; and that those things which for the present are not joyous but grievous, nevertheless work in us the peaceable fruit of righteousness! So we stand in what may be called a relationship of grief. We are knit together and brought into each others' company by the ministration of grief, made Christian and blessed.

To be sure, if we were to ask this life what would be best, there is no father, there is no mother, who would not plead with all the strength which lies in natural affection, "Spare me, and spare mine." For the outward man this is reasonable and unrebukable; and yet, if it be overruled by Him who loves us even better than He loves his own life, then there comes the revelation of another truth: namely, that the things which are seen are the unreal things, and that the real things are the things which are invisible.

When our children that are so dear to us are plucked out of our arms, and carried away, we feel, for the time being, that we have lost them, because our body does not triumph; but are they taken from our inward man ? Are they taken from that which is to be saved-the spiritual man? Are they taken from memory? Are they taken from love? Are they taken from the scope and reach of

the imagination, which in its sanctified form, is only another name for faith? Do we not sometimes dwell with them more intimately than we did when they were with us on earth? The care of them is no longer ours, that love-burden we bear no longer, since they are with the angels of God and with God; and we shed tears over what seems to be our loss; but do they not hover in the air over our heads? And to-day could the room hold

them all?

As you recollect, the background of the Sistine Madonna, at Dresden (in some respects the most wonderful picture of maternal love which exists in the world), for a long time was merely dark; and an artist, in making some repairs, discovered a cherub's face in the grime of that dark background; and being led to suspect that the picture had been overlaid by time and neglect, commenced cleansing it; and as he went on, cherub after cherub appeared, until it was found that the Madonna was on a background made up wholly of little heavenly cherubs.

Now, by nature motherhood stands against a dark background; but that background being cleaned by the touch of God, and by the cleansing hand of faith, we see that the whole heaven is full of little cherub faces. And to-day it is not this little child alone that we look at, which we see only in the outward guise; we look upon a background of children innumerable, cach one as sweet to its mother's heart as this child has been to its mother's heart, each one as dear to the clasping arms of its father as this child has been to the clasping arms of its father; and it is in good company. It is in a springland. It is in a summer-world. It is with God. You have given it back to Him who lent it to you.

Now, the giving back is very hard, but you cannot give back to God all that you received with your child.

You cannot give back to God those springs of new and deeper affection which were awakened by the coming of this little one. You cannot give back to God the experiences which you have had in dwelling with your darling. You cannot give back to God the hours which, when you look upon them now, seem like one golden chain of linked happiness.

You are better, you are riper, you are richer, even in this hour of bereavement, than you were. God gave; and he has not taken away except in outward form. He holds, he keeps, he reserves, he watches, he loves. You shall have again that which you have given back to him only outwardly.

Meanwhile, the key is in your hand; and it is not a black iron key; it is a golden key of faith and love. This little child has taught you to follow it. There will not be a sunrise or a sunset when you will not in imagination go through the gate of heaven after it. There is no door so fast that a mother's love and a father's love will not open it and follow a beloved child. And so, by its ministration, this child will guide you a thousand times into a realization of the great spirit-land, and into a faith of the invisible, which will make you as much larger as it makes you less dependent on the body, and more rich in the fruitage of the spirit.

To-day, then, we have an errand of thanksgiving. We thank God for sending this little gift into this household. We thank God for the light which he kindled here, and which burned with so pure a flame, and taught so sweet a lesson. And we thank God, that, when this child was to go to a better place, it walked so few steps, for so few hours, through pain. Men who look on the dark side shake the head, and say, "Oh, how sudden!" but I say, Since it was to go, God be thanked that it was permitted to pass through so brief a

period of suffering; that there were no long weeks or months of gradual decay and then a final extinction; that out of the fullness of health it dropped into the fullness of heaven, leaving its body as it lies before you today a thing of beauty. Blessed be God for such mercy in the ministration of sickness and of departure.

I appreciate your sorrow, having myself often gone through this experience; and I can say that there is no other experience which throws such a light upon the storm-cloud. We are never ripe till we have been made so by suffering. We belong to those fruits which must be touched by frost before they lose their sourness and come to their sweetness. I see the goodness of God in this dispensation as pointing us toward heaven and immortality. In this bereavement there is cause for rejoicing; for sure it is that you and your child shall meet again never to be separated.

INFANT SALVATION.

REV. CHARLES A. EVANS.

Whosoever shall not receive the kindgom of God as a little child, shall in no wise enter therein. LUKE XViii: 17.

Οι

UR text, on the authority of our Lord, teaches one of the most consoling, supporting, heart-cheering doctrines to the bereaved parent, that is contained in the holy scriptures-that is, that little children are redeemed and glorified. That this is the doctrine of the text is indisputably clear, both from the connection in which it stands, and also from the meaning of the phrase "Kingdom of God." In the preceding context, the Saviour made use of a parable, in order to convince the Jews of the impossibility of being justified by works,