Let not the image of our friends, as sick and in pain, occupy our thoughts.  “For the former things are passed away.”  Their language, as they call back to us, is, “As dying, and behold, we live.”

We who have children and friends that sleep in Jesus, and who expect ourselves to be, with them, and with one another, children of the resurrection, will soon know each other in the presence of Christ.  We shall have become reunited in the presence of each other to our loved and lost ones.  The great question then will be, How did we fulfil God’s special and benevolent designs in our trials?  If we revisit scenes of deep affliction where death and the grave usurped their dread power over us for a season, we shall remember our misery as waters that pass away.  In hope of this, we will patiently and joyfully labor and suffer.  “The night is far spent; the day is at hand.”

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On a pleasant morning in April, three months from the time of her decease, the mortal part of the dear child whose name gives this book its title, was removed from its temporary resting place in the city, to her grave in the family cemetery.  As the hands of her father, which baptized her, laid her to rest in her sweet and peaceful bed, and the simple stone, with her chosen “lilies of the valley and rose buds” carved on it, was set up,—­the gift of one whose consanguinity was made by him the delicate ground of claim to do this touching and abiding act of love,—­it seemed as though, in some sense, there had already been brought to pass the saying which is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

But in the night, a gentle April shower fell; and as the thoughts were carried by it, spellbound, from the chamber where she was born, to her newly-made grave,—­that night being the first of her sleeping there,—­it seemed very plain that, though Death had been conquered, the Grave still kept possession of the field.—­Christ “will be thy destruction,” O Grave, as he has been “thy plagues,” O Death!  The early rain seemed to have made good haste in visiting the fresh mound and the flower seeds already placed there, conspiring with them to cover the grave speedily with emblems of the resurrection, as though, with confident boast and exultation, they would, beforehand, say, “Where is thy victory?” Simple thoughts and fancies, which we hardly dare utter, have wonderful power, in great sorrows, to change the whole current of the feelings; for while that soft shower was heard, falling on the grave, it seemed as if a heavenly watcher was in care of the place; and so, leaving them together, it was easy and pleasant to fall asleep.

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