If we meet certain of our friends at the end of their search after pleasure, having forgotten their God and Saviour, and see them disappointed, and utterly destitute of any thing to make them happy forever, and all because they would not forego their chase after unsatisfying pleasure,—­there is many a faithful Christian friend, whose example and advice they disregarded, who could then reply, “Did I not say unto you, Go not?”

In the name of some unspeakably dear to you, we say, “We are journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you; come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel.”

Our friends, who have gone to heaven, ought not to be invested, in our thoughts, with such melancholy associations as we are prone to connect with them.  To die is gain.  Trouble, and sorrow, and the dark river, interpose between us and heaven; but in the prospect which has opened before the eye of the redeemed spirit, there is nothing but widening and brightening glory.  We must not seek for consolation at their departure by bringing them back, in our thoughts, to our dwellings, but by going forward, in faith, ourselves, to their dwelling.  There is much to encourage and help us in doing so, in the following lines, which may be read with profit upon each anniversary of a friend’s departure to heaven, until surviving friends read them at the returning anniversaries of our own entrance into the joy of our Lord:—­

    “A year in heaven.

    A year UNCALENDARED; for what
      Hast thou to do with mortal time? 
    Its dole of moments entereth not
      That circle, mystic and sublime,
    Whose unreached centre is the throne
      Of Him, before whose awful brow,
    Meeting eternities are known
      As but an everlasting now. 
    The thought removes thee far away,—­
      Too far,—­beyond my love and tears;
    Ah, let me hold thee, as I may;
      And count thy time by earthly years.

    A year of blessedness; wherein
      Not one dim cloud hath crossed thy soul;
    No sigh of grief, no touch of sin,
      No frail mortality’s control;
    Nor once hath disappointment stung,
      Nor care, world-weary, made thee pine;
    But rapture, such as human tongue
      Hath found no language for, is thine. 
    Made perfect at thy passing, who
      Can sum thy added glory now? 
    As on, and onward, upward, through
      The angel ranks that lowly bow,
    Ascending still from height to height
      Unfaltering, where rapt spirits trod,
    Nor pausing ’mid their circles bright,
      Thou tendest inward unto God.