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    gladden the eye with their beauty : these things have a holier purpose ; a religious desigru We see that not a leaf fades till the purpose of its existence is fulfilled ; and then we learn , that the infant cannot perish , though in the sight of men it seems to die . ' He asked life of thee , and thou gavest it him ; even length of days for ever and ever . ' All this is more than confirmed by Christianity , and religion hardly acknowledges such a thing as

    death ; for there is no such thing as death to the soul . The change which bears the name of death , cannot deprive it of one ^ of its affections *> r its powers ; and if any human ; spirits are prepared to enter the heavenly mansions , they must be those that have left this world in the day-break of their existence , before they have been darkened by calamity or profaned by sin . The time which is best for beginning their moral improvement , is the time to die , and if we had the power , who would dare withhold them from their

    Father and our Father , from their God and our God ? " I left the place with a conviction which I hope will never fail me ; a Conviction , that death is not the momentous change we imagine ; it is neither the close of life nor the beginning of immortal existence . The change which makes a man religious , should date the time when the ' corruptible puts on . incorruption , and the mortal immortality . ' The first heralds of our faith , the most intrepid men the world ever saw , regarded death with comparative indifference ; they looked upon it , not as a time when they should be altered

    in their destiny , character , or feelings ; it was simply a dissolution of the form ; a release from the body , whose infirmities had so often weighed down the soul . The heaven of the blest begins when they begin to feel the peace which religion gives ; death will only place them where the shadows of earth shall no longer surround them ; they will go in the same path which they trod below , or rather in the same direction—for they shall ascend with ' wings as eagles , ' and go on rejoicing in their glorious flight through the boundless heaven .

    " Oh ! that we understood this L Then the relations of parents and children would be far more endearing and exalted . They who give their children life , are to give them immortality . When they teach them to add the beauty of holiness to the beauty of childhood and of youth ; when they impress religion on their souls , by the eloquence of the simple story or the music of the plaintive hymn ; when they shew them how to gather the

    harvest of peace and happiness , which forms the heaven of the blest , they are making them immortal . To them there shall be no more death . The grave shall not be an interruption in that never-ending way , in which they pass from glory to glory on either side the grave- And they who are taken before their promise is unfolded , when their smiles are bright with an intelligence which only a parent ' s eye can read , do not taste of death ; they are translated like the early friend of God .

    " Let those who are weeping for their children remember this and be comforted . That loved one is with him who suffered children to come to him when he lived below . It is with the spirits of the just . Had it lived it might have been happy ; but now there is no uncertainty . It lives where it must be happy . The gentle star is not quenched so soon as they imagine . They see it no longer , because it is lost in the deeper brightness of the sky . "

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    Offering of Sympathy to Parents . 811

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1831, page 811, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2604/page/15/