, 1842-04-02

heavens, while his pale wasted countenance
CLEANED strangely in the rosy light. Got
treich fell upon the old mans bosom. who
stretched toward him his wilhered yell
low hand, and said, "You have come just
in time my, son."
Justa related, in a few words, how the ia
Their had overweight himself in attention
to his duties, and had been now, for some
days, half sunk in leatheargy; seeming to
lake no more interest in all that. had once
been dearest to him. As he spoke, the old
man heard not. but continued gazing upon
the sun, sitting now behind clouds Of crimson
and gold. Suddenly the heavens were over
clouded; a dead calm lasted a few minutes;
then Tell heavy shower of rain; the lightning
streaned through the chamber, and the thun.
der rolled among the hills. 1t seemed that
the disturbance had arorsed the diving man
from his stupor: II hear" said he, the
ram againg; speak, children; for must soon
60" The heaven discharged their fitness,
and all life throughout the vale seemed re-
freshed by the shower as the sun broke forth
again and changed the cloud. wrecks of the
storm into shapes and hues of ~wonderous
beauty. "See," said the eulivened old man.
pointing to the sky, "see the glorious work
~of God! And now, my son, tell me for a
last comfort here, something of the goodness
and loneliness of the Almighty. One, as
you told us in your homil;es in the spring.
Gottreich wept as he thought that the little
manual drawn W for his own use-the "Re-
collections Of the Fairest Hours to cheer the
Latest Hours of Life"-must be first read
sshls fathers death-bed. When he men.
toned them, the old man said, "Hasten and
bring Them, And so, with trembling voice.
Gottreich began:
"Oh think, in the darksome hour, how the
glory of heaven and earth once filled your
bo'omI-how you gazed by day into one in
hnitude Of beauty, and by night into anoth-
er? Put away the unmeaning notion of void
space, and surround yourself again, as a
middle point, with the ~fullness and glory of
Innumerable suns and worlds, all full of life
and lo~ve-splendor with splendor, grandeur
with grandeur mingling. Soar, spirit! ages
after ages, from world,-you will ever be in
the bosom of the infinite f~ullness, in no per-
IL OF falling into a dead void; for empty space
Is only between the worlds, and not around
them all. Oh think, in the darksome hour.
on the time when your heart burst forth in
rapturous prayer TO God! on the day when
the thought of the infinite, the eternal, OPEN
ed in your mind"
Here the old man folded his hands in 81
lent prayer. Have you not known and
felt present the Being whose in6nitude is not
only Of power and wisdom, but of love?-I
now the sweet hours of childhood, when the
deep blue sky of night opened upon you
like the soft kind eyes of a preserving angel
over you. And think how a gentle refec-
tions of the eternal goodness, from heart to
heart, from eye to eye, of mankind, have
played around you, as the one light plays
from sun to sun, from world to world, through
all the universe.
"Oh think, in the darksome hour, how, in
the springtide, the grave only seemed the
horizon of a few world, and how, even in
the f~u.lness of life, you could think of better
things after death. Think that your life is
ever SURROUNDED with the universal life in
which birth and death are only the light up
permost pillows of an unfanthomable ocean.
And can you forget, in the darksome hour,
father how great and good men have lived
and died whose path you are now following?
See tho great spirits of the human race who
on their mountain-towers. with the
storms Of life about and below, but never
them. Recall to mind the snthroned
succession of sages and poets who have
and inspired people after people,
SO many ages"
"Seak of our Redsemer," said the father.
"Yes; think, in the darksoms hour, of Jesus
Christ. Life is holy, and death is holy; for
he has shared both with us. May he look
upon you, in this last darksome hour, and