WHOEVER has been called, in the midst of life, to part with 'the wife of his youth'--if these pages should chance to meet his eye--will _know_ what the writer has felt. Such a bereavement must be _felt_, in order to be understood. There is a shock in its coming for which no foresight or submission can fully prepare us. There is a chasm created by it which nothing can fill. It is a new experience, replete with dreadful desolation. It is a wonderful attribute of grace that can make these great afflictions so "work _for us_ an exceeding and eternal weight of glory," that the most weighty and enduring of them all, shall seem, in comparison, to be "light, and but for a moment." Yet "no chastisement," (especially such as this) "for the present seemeth to be joyous, but rather grievous." God intends that we shall be _moved_ by such visitations. The call which they utter is too costly to be lightly felt. The stroke is too deep to be hastily healed. "To _faint_ when we are rebuked of Him," is to reproach the goodness of God, when we ought to "lay hold on his strength." But insensibility to his afflictive dispensations is to "despise" the methods of his grace. And who can fail to feel at such a moment! To find one's self strangely, and after all the warnings mercifully given, suddenly left alone; in the midst of life to be broken in twain; to come to a time when you may no longer pray with her whose presence sweetened devotion itself; no more pray for her who many a year has been the dear burden of all your intercessions; to see your orphan babes left desolate, and enhancing your woe, by being unconscious of their own; yea, "to sorrow most of all" for those dread words, "that you shall see her face no more!" This is sorrow! If it were possible, and being so, were right to ask it for others, we might pray for our readers, that they may be forever ignorant of our experience. But we know that every house is appointed to such a sorrow, sooner or later. They who are yet to pass through these deep waters, if they cannot now fully enter into our trials, may at least be expected to excuse this humble tribute to the dead, as an amiable weakness.