stealing in of the inevitable gloom; this vacating of the
chair, the table, and the bed; this vanishing of the familiar
face into darkness; this passage from communion to memory;
this diminishing of love's orb into narrower phases, --into a
crescent, --into a shadow. Surely, however broad the view we
take of the universe, a real woe, a veritable experience of
suffering, amidst this boundless benificence, reaching as
deep as the heart's core, is this old and common sorrow; --
the sorrow of woman for her babes, and of man for his
helpmate, and of age for its prop, and of the son for the
mother that bore him, and of the heart for the hearts that
once beat in sympathy, and of the eyes that hide vacancies
with tears. When these old stakes are wrenched from their
sockets, and these intimate cords are snapped, one begins to
feel his own tent shake and flap in the wind that comes from
eternity, and to realize that there is no abiding tabernacle
here.

But ought we really to wish that these relations might remain
unbroken, and to murmur because it is not so? We shall be
able to answer this question in the negative, I think, --
however hard it may be to do so, -- when we consider, in the
first place, that this breaking up and separation are
inevitable. For we may be assured that whatever in the
system of things is inevitable is beneficent. The
dissolution of these bonds comes by the same law as that
which ordains them; and we may be sure that the one --though
it plays out of sight, and is swallowed up in mystery --is as
wise and tender in its purpose as the other. It is very
consoling to recognize the Hand that gave in the Hand that