March 15

If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. - Genesis 43:14.

PAUL speaks of “the comforts of love;” and he that does not know the comforts of love does not yet know the difference between a brute and a man. The highest pleasures of which our nature are susceptible are derived from social endearments. Ah! we may also say, and are not a thousand pangs derived from the same source? Do we not pay dearly for all our relative delights?

Are they not expensively taxed with the pain of sympathy, the dread of separation, and the anguish of loss? It has been poetically imagined that the roses in Paradise had no thorns: however this may be, we well know that our roses are not without them, but, as Dr. Watts says,-

“Our roses grow on thorns, and honey hides a sting.”

Our possessions render us fearful and anxious, and expose us to loss; all through life in proportion to our affections will be our afflictions; and we shall always suffer more from friends than enemies,-from our own connections than from strangers. Alas! what sighs oppress the minds of many! There has gone to the house of God one who had formerly a fellow-Christian for a friend. They unbosomed themselves to each other in all their pleasures and griefs. There was but one heart, only it occupied two bosoms. And now he is exclaiming, “Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.” They strengthened each other’s hands in God, and found the truth of Solomon’s words:-“Iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” “Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart, so doth a man his friend by hearty counsel.”

Here is a Rachel: she was viewing the growing charms of her babe, and was saying, “This same shall comfort us;” but the blossom withered into dust, and she has been laying aside its little clothes with her own hand, and, sitting by the side of the drawers in the chamber, weeps for her child, and refuses to be comforted. The father viewed the son as his image, his representative, his heir; but he has been to the mouth of the grave, where he sighed, “Thou destroyest the hope of man; childhood and youth are vanity.” Here returns to her place the widow and the mother. She had a husband,-she had children; but she is now saying, “Call me not Naomi: call me Mara; for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord brought me home again empty.” Here is Martha at the feet of Jesus, saying, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” And here is Jacob, shaking his gray hairs, and saying, “Joseph is not, and Simeon is not: all these things are against me. If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.”