Though our loved ones are gone, they are still with us in spirit; yea, they are ours still, in the best sense of possession; our relationship with them is not destroyed, but hallowed. Though absent, they still live and love; and they come thronging as ministering spirits to our hearts; they hover near us, and commune with us. Though death may separate us from them, it does not disunite us. Your departed children, though separated from you in body, are still yours, are with you in spirit, and are members of your family. They represent your household in heaven, and are a promise that you will be there also. You are still their parents; you are still one family,--one in spirit, in faith, in hope, in promise, in Christ. You still dwell together in the fond memories of home, and in the bright anticipation of a coming reunion in heaven. Oh, with this view of death and with this hope of joining love's buried ones again, you can gather those that yet remain, and talk to them of those you put, cold and speechless, in their bed of clay; and while their bodies lie exposed to the winter's storm or to the summer's heat, you can point the living to that cheering promise which spans, as with an areole of glory, the graves of buried love; you can tell them they shall meet their departed kindred in a better home. Oh, clasp this promise to your aching heart; treasure it up as a pearl of great price. Your departed children are not lost to you; and their death to them is great gain. They are not lost, but only sent before. "The Lord, has taken them away." With these views of death before you, and with the moral instructions they afford, you cannot but feel that your children, though absent from you in body, are with you in spirit,--are still living with you in your household, and are among that spirit-throng which ever press around you, to bear you up lest you dash your foot against a stone. Such were the feelings of the Christian father, as expressed in the following touching lines:-- "I cannot make him dead! When passing by his bed, So long watched over with parental care, My spirit and my eye Seek it inquiringly, Before the thought comes that--he is not there! "When at the day's calm close Before we seek repose, I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer, Whate'er I may be saying, I am, in spirit, praying For our boy's spirit, though--he is not there! "Not there? Where, then, is he? The form I used to see Was but the raiment that he used to wear. The grave, that now doth press Upon that cast-off dress, Is but his wardrobe locked;--he is not there! "He lives! In all the past He lives; nor, to the last, Of seeing him again will I despair; In dreams I see him now, And on his angel brow, I see it written, 'Thou shalt see me there!'