The world is full of such desolation, and there are many to whom existence is a burden, because its light has thus gone out. * * * * * But God has always some providential alleviations in store for such bereavement, and let us turn from the fact to its solace. In some form the mercy of that voice from the Cross may always be heard, "Woman, behold thy son! Disciple, behold thy mother!" The Christian church itself never practically unmerciful to its people, even in its sternest days, has always rejoiced to comfort orphanage by the solace of secondary relations; providing new proteges for the childless, new guardians for the fatherless, and new homes for the homeless. There are few families of large experience and just feeling, where something of this same office has not been performed; and where, although other gifts may not be needed, the solace of sympathy is never withheld. It becomes an important practical question with many, how those secondary relations shall be formed, which may in some measure take the place of the ties severed by death. Here may be children without father, or mother, or both. Here are homes that are childless either through death or by the absence of the blessing, whose absence is of itself to our nature as a bereavement. It is not well to leave the heart void, and God himself, whose Spirit moved our Saviour to commend his mother to his disciple, has provided alleviations. They who need them for themselves or seek them for others must use their best judgment and principle in the choice. There may be gross wrong or frivolous error in the selection, for there are some so desperate as to drown grief in dissipation, and others so light-minded as to lavish upon a parrot, or a dog, or a horse, the affections that belong to immortal creatures.