And finally, dear friend, remember this. From that mighty sorrow which now so overwhelms you, something great and beautiful is sure to come into your life, something will enrich and strengthen your soul if you will permit it to do so. Just as when the night is darkest, the stars shine with the greater brilliancy, so out of the black pall of this new and seemingly terrible calamity, you will find if you continue to look upward, new stars of unknown beauty flashing in splendor, to comfort and guide you across the surging sea of life. Look up then, weary, lonely, sorrowing soul, and you will see them, and remember this, that back of them, and about you is God. "Underneath are the everlasting arms. Trust then, dear friend, the Source of all life, and nothing will ever separate

you from the presence of your loved ones.

In deepest sympathy,

A Prayer of Submission

O

LORD God of the whole earth, all souls are Thine, and our souls and our lives are wholly in thy hands. We have neither the power to resist, nor the right to gainsay thy will, but the heart, darkened and torn with its grief and fears, flees as a bird to its mountain, to Thee. In Thee alone from whom all trial and all blessing alike cometh, is there refuge for the soul. Teach us this day to say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord."

O our Heavenly Father, we cannot bear alone this great burden of life, and all that life involves. Tremblingly do we say, "Thy will be done." O give us the power to accept thy will without fear. Thou O God, didst create the affections which life so often sorely wounds and bereaves; look, we pray Thee, pitifully upon the bleeding of these wounds. Be patient, we beseech Thee, with the weakness of a soul still ungrown and ignorant. Our hearts cling to the objects of their love. It is so hard to give them up and cling to Thee alone, nay rather to know that in Thee we have them still. They were so near, and Thou to our weak faith and imperfect vision, dost often seem so far. Thou hidest thyself, and thy greatness is so great above us, that we sometimes cannot feel thy sympathy as we should.

Heavenly Father, we are dumb before Thee. Be merciful we pray. Manifest the exceeding tenderness of thy compassion. Be pleased to remember how frail we are. And measure not, O God, we beseech Thee, thy goodness by our deserts. We are thy creatures. Thou has brought us into being. Spare, O Lord, the work of thy hand. the souls that cry to Thee, out of their deep weakness and dependence.

Crush not utterly

In the course of that life which Thou alone dost order, whatever it shall please Thee to take from us, or seem to take away, may it please Thee to leave with us the comfort of thy peace. Suffer not our souls to be bewildered utterly in trials, and permit us not to fall into the outer darkness of despair.

Grant, O God, that ultimately the shadows of this troubled life may disappear through the rising of the sun of thy presence and thy love, and that with all those who have gone from our sight, we may meet in "that fair morn of morns" when the sorrows and tears and losses of this life shall be forgotten in the blessed companionships and compensations of the heavenly life.

May the Spirit of all grace and power, which in the Garden and on the Cross did sustain Jesus of Nazareth, graciously be with us in this hour of unutterable darkness and grief, and for his sake, give us the victory, here and hereafter.

-Rev. Walter R. Brooks, D.D.

Permission of
Randolph & Co.

A Message

DUR

URING these lonely days of strain and suspense, I have wished so much that I could be a little help to you. I can tell you this at least, and pray that you may have from God and your friends and your own heart, strength enough to get through one day at a time. I do not see what else you can do but just live, now. You cannot understand or explain, but you know as well as I, that back of everything is God, and God is light-"we shall see;" and God is love-"we shall be satisfied." It may be a long while, but it will be worth waiting for. Trust Him-all you can you will be glad you did.

Copyright 1901. by

Maltbie Babcock.

Chas. Scribner's Sons

Christus Consolator

BESIDE

ESIDE the dead I knelt for prayer,
And felt a presence as I prayed.
Lo! it was Jesus standing there.
He smiled: "Be not afraid!"

"Lord, thou has conquered death, we know;
Restore again to life," I said,
"This one who died an hour ago."
He smiled: "He is not dead!"

"In Memoriam”

H YET we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will
Defects of doubt and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet,

That no one life will be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void
When God hath made the pile complete.

So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares Upon the world's great altar-stairs, That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather chaff and dust and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live forevermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is.

I hold it true whate'er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most, 'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.

-Alfred Tennyson.

My Heaven

AN I forget that yesterday, supernal,

That thrilled my soul with life at meeting thine? Or shall I fail to reach the radiant morn eternal,

When thy sweet love undimmed shall on me shine?

C

For tho' the earth is large and heaven is filled with wonder,
And life's dark mysteries hold no helpful gleam,

I know that tearful ways which lead true hearts asunder,
Must meet somewhere beyond life's troubled dream.

And tho' our paths to-day seem strangely severed,
Tho' long my way and lonely ere we meet,
The magic of true love will bring them both together,
Beyond the gates of pearl-in Heaven, complete.

So still I trust my heavenly Father's leading

And feel that he whose wisdom formed the soul, Can take these broken hearts, so sad, bereaved, and bleeding, And from life's fragments make one glorious whole.

And this I know, that should I sadly wander,
A million ages, missing still my way;

Somewhere, O soul of mine, in some fair heaven yonder,
Thy love shall be my heaven again some day.

Yes, best of all, the old love is unbroken,
I know thy presence ever at my side,
Soul answers soul, beyond mere earth born fleeting token,
'Tis heaven now, whatever may betide.

-C. C. Pierce.