CHAPTER VII.

The Little Ones in Heaven.

M

CHAPTER VII.

THE LITTLE ONES IN HEAVEN.

OF

F all topics connected with the subject we are discussing, none comes home to a wider circle than the thought of children in heaven.

"There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,

But has one vacant chair;

There is no flock, however watched and tended,

But one dead lamb is there.

The air is full of farewells for the dying,

And mournings for the dead.

The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted."

You cannot help thinking, O mother, often and sadly, of that little one you have in heaven. You remember the day when the coffin came home for her; and oh! how well you remember the first night after it went

away again, carrying in it that sweet little form. As you sat in your loneliness, you could well enter into the poet's words,

"No mother's eye beside thee wakes to-night,

No taper burns beside thy lonely bed.
Darkling thou liest, hidden out of sight,

And none are near thee but the silent dead.

How cheerly glows this hearth, yet glows in vain,
For we, uncheered, beside it sit alone,
And listen to the wild and beating rain,

In angry gusts against our casement blown.

And, though we nothing speak, yet well I know
That both our hearts are there where thou dost keep,
Within thy narrow chamber far below,

For the first time, unwatched, thy lonely sleep."

Let us talk then for a little about the children in heaven.

I. Let us speak of the children of Believers. Here, happily, we are on the firmest of firm ground. The light which shines upon them in the other world is as clear as could be. From the very beginning of the Bible we see them included in the Covenant with their Under the Jewish economy they parents. were marked for God with the seal of circumcision, and the recognition which He thus gave them has never been withdrawn.