We sometimes think that they miss great good who depart from us in early years; that one who has arrived at the entrance to the world's great feast must be sadly disappointed to be led away, never to go in. Now, it is true that we must not shrink from the battle of life; we must take upon ourselves, if God ordains it, the great jeopardy of disappointment and sorrow, and the chance of life's joys; we must each stand in his lot; we must send children forth into the harvest of the earth for sheaves, and whether they faint and die under their load, or deck themselves with garlands,--still, let them be laborers together with God, and let us not seek exemption for them. But if God ordains their early translation to heaven, what can earth afford them in the way of pleasure, granting the cup to be full and unalloyed, to be compared with fulness of joy? Fair maidens in heaven,--and O, how many of them has consumption gathered in!--fair maidens there are like the white flowers, which are sacred to peculiar times and scenes. How goodly must be their array! What a perpetual spring tide of vivacious joy and delight do they create in heaven. It is pleasant to have a child among them. It has been my privilege to see, in this child, an example of true preparation for death, which begins before the expectation of dying brings the least discredit, or breath of suspicion, upon our motives in attending to the subject of religion. Preparation for death consists in justification by faith, extending its influence into the whole character, to bring us under the rule of Christ. The fruit of this is friendship with God, the confidence of love, knowing whom we have believed, with the persuasion of our having committed to him an infinite trust, and that he will keep it with covenant faithfulness. So when death comes and knocks at the door, it is true the heart beats quicker, as it is apt to do whoever knocks there; for, to give up one's hold on life, to turn and look eternal things full in the face, to think of meeting God, and of having your endless condition fixed, summons the whole of natural and acquired fortitude; and only they who have an unseen arm to lean upon at such a time, endure in that trial. Then past experience comes in with her powerful aid: "I have fought a good fight;" "the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps;" "remember, O Lord, how I have walked before thee." Thus there is something to make you feel that your justification, by free grace, has the evidence afforded by its fruits; and the preparation to die may be likened to that of which the Saviour speaks when he says, "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit." I have seen it, have watched it, have studied it, in the dying scenes of this child. Hers was not the experience of the sinner, pulled suddenly from the waves by a hand which he had for a long time, nay, always, spurned; but her dying was an arrival at the end of a voyage, the coming home of a