On a summer’s day, the gentle western wind brings in all the sweets of the field and garden; and the child, overtasked by joy, comes back weary, and climbs for sport into the mother’s lap; and before he can sport, he feels the balm of rest stealing over him, and lays his curly head back upon her arm; and look! he goes to sleep; hush! he has gone to sleep; and all the children stand smiling.
How beautiful it is to see a child drop asleep upon its mother’s arm! And it is said of one, “He fell asleep in Jesus.” Is there anything so high, so noble, so divine, as the way in which the New Testament speaks of dying? How near death is, and how beautiful!
If you have lost your companions, children, friends, you have not lost them.
They followed the Pilot They went through airy channels, unknown and unsearchable, and they are with the Lord; and you are going to be with Him too. I die to go, not to Jerusalem, but to the New Jerusalem.
I die, not to wait in the rock-ribbed sepulchre, which shall hold me sure; I die, that when this body is dropped I shall have a place, in the inward fullness of my spiritual power, with the Lord. “Because He lives, I shall live again, also.”—BEECHER.
