“And this is all the comfort you bring to my yearning heart?” said the mother.  “My darling, if all you say be true, is lost to me forever.”

“He was not yours, but God’s.”  The friend spoke softly, yet with a firm utterance.

“He was mine to love,” replied the bereaved one.

“And your love would confer upon its precious object the richest blessings.  Dear friend!  Lift your thoughts a little way above the clouds that sorrow has gathered around your heart, and let perception come into an atmosphere radiant with light from the Sun of Truth.  Think of your child as destined to become, in the better world to which God has removed him, a wise and loving angel.  Picture to your imagination the higher happiness, springing from higher capacities and higher uses, which must crown the angelic life.  Doing this, and loving your lost darling, I know that you cannot ask for him a perpetual babyhood in heaven.”

“I will ask nothing for him but what ‘Our Father’ pleaseth to give,” said the mother, in calmer tones.  “My love is selfish, I know.  I called that babe mine—­mine in the broadest sense—­yet he was God’s, as every other creature is his—­one of the stones in his living temple—­one of the members of his kingdom.  It does not comfort me in my great sorrow to think that, as a child, I shall not again behold him, but rays of new light are streaming into my mind, and I see things in new aspects and new relations.  Out of this deep affliction good will arise.”

“Just as certainly,” added the friend, “as that the Sun shines and the dew falls.  It will be better for you, and better for the child.  To both will come a resurrection into higher and purer life.”

V.

Angels in the heart.

THE heart is full of guest-chambers that are never empty; and as the heart is the seat of life, these guests are continually acting upon the life, either for good or evil, according to their quality.  As the guests are, so our states of life—­tranquil and happy, if good; disturbed and miserable, if evil.

We may choose our own guests, if we are wise.  None can open the door and come in, unless we give consent; always provided that we keep watch and ward.  If we leave wide open the doors of our houses, or neglect to fasten them in the night season, thieves and robbers will enter and despoil us at will.  So if we leave the heart, unguarded, enemies will come in.  But if we open the door only to good affections—­which are guests—­then we shall dwell in peace and safety.  We have all opened the door for enemies; or let them enter through unguarded portals.  They are in all the heart’s guest-chambers.  They possess the very citadel of life; and the measure of their possession is the measure of our unhappiness.