Immediately after the nuptial ceremony, Mr. L——­ accompanied his bride to the Falls of Niagara, that favorite place of resort on such memorable occasions.  They were now all the world to each other.  Alas, how utterly, for a time, did they overlook the injunction, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”  Nor did they for once even dream how insensibly the streams of God’s bounty and goodness were withdrawing their hearts from the fountain of all blessedness and perfection.

On their return from this delightful excursion, this envied young husband was soon found at his post of business, surrounded by numerous friends all eager to aid and encourage him on in his preparations to welcome to his home and his heart, his darling “wife.”  Oh, how sweet to him did that treasured name sound, when greeted by his young friends, and the question was asked, “How is your wife?” “When do you expect your wife?” Never, he felt, was there another more truly blessed.

How sudden must have been the transition, for the summons came, as it were, in a moment, “The Master has come, and calleth for thee.”  Young Mr. L——­ had been in the city but two days, when retiring to his bed, he was suddenly siezed with a bilious attack, and in a few brief hours, even before his friends could reach his bed-side, he was wrapped in the habiliments of the grave.  His last faint farewell was uttered in hurried and broken accents, just as he expired, “Tell her that Jesus makes me willing”—­“makes me willing.”

In his ready, cheerful, and manly willingness to obey the Master’s call, though so sudden, we see the blessed influence of early parental discipline—­absolute unconditional submission to parental authority.

Truly this was a most sad and unexpected reverse for that youthful and happy bride.  Her face at once became as pale and almost marble-like, as the icy hand of death had made that of her husband’s.  No wonder if this world should now seem to her as a barren wilderness.  No wonder if her thoughts, for a time, should brood mournfully over the words, “Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.”  No wonder if to her desolate heart, solitude, and gloom, and the grave, should, for a season, be her chosen themes of contemplation.  She does well to grieve.  There is nothing wrong in the mourner’s tears.  We have the example of Jesus in such an expression—­tears are Nature’s own sweet relief.  It is safe—­yes, it is well to bleed when our limbs are taken from our side.

But let such as mourn remember, in all cases of bereavement, it is God, whose discipline is strictly parental, hath done it, and “He doeth all things well.”  How sad it is when the bereaved, who are not called to mourn as those who have no hope, allow their thoughts to find a lodgment only in the grave.  How widely different had been the condition of this youthful mourner, if, instead of shutting herself up in her