conviction--had she been bowed down under a sense of sin--would she not
have inquired whether the blessed Saviour, perceiving the lurking danger
there was to this young couple, from a disposition to find their heaven
upon earth, to seek their chief happiness in each other, had not with
the voice of love and tender compassion said to her husband, "The Master
hath need of thee, come up hither." Had her heart been right with God,
as she contemplated her departed friend in his new-born zeal to honor
and glorify his Redeemer, flying on swift wings to perform Heaven's
mandates, would she not resolve, by the grace of God, to emulate him in
his greater efforts to save lost souls, for whom Christ died? Were not
the same motives set before her, by his death, to seek a new and holy
life? Was not the same grace--the same strength proffered to her, which,
if accepted and improved aright, would have enabled her to deny
herself--to take up her cross and to follow Jesus whithersoever he might
see fit to lead her?

But, alas, this was in nowise her happy experience. On the contrary, she
turned away from the consolations proffered to her in God's blessed
Word, and by his Holy Spirit, and in the teachings of that last touching
"farewell."

May we not suppose that her husband, on finding himself liberated from
the trappings of earth, from sin and temptation, as his thoughts would
naturally revert to the friends he had left behind--finding his chosen,
bosom friend, a mere clod of clay, sunk down in a state of hopeless
misery and sorrow, at his loss, having no sympathy with him in his new
and blessed abode, and in his more exalted employments and purer
enjoyments, would he not rather bless God, more ardently, that he was so
quickly removed from such chilling, blighting earth-born influences as
she might have exerted over him?