You find yourself in the presence of what is a far deeper and more poignant trial than an old man's death--a young life cut off in its prime; the eclipse of a sun before the evening has arrived. Accustom yourself to consider the life that has passed as a whole. A human being has been called into the world--has lived in it ten, twenty, thirty years. It seems to you an intolerable instance of the injustice of fate that he is so early cut off. Estimate, then, that life as a whole, and ask yourself whether, so judged, it has been a blessing or the reverse. Count up the years of happiness. Count up the days, or perhaps weeks, of illness and of pain. Measure the happiness that this short life has given to some who have passed away; who never lived to see its early close. Balance the happiness which during its existence it gave to those who survived, with the poignancy and the duration of pain caused by the loss. Here, for example, is one who lived perhaps twenty-five years in health and vigour; whose life during that period was chequered by no serious misfortune; whose nature, though from time to time clouded by petty anxieties and cares, was on the whole bright, buoyant, and happy; who had the capacity of vivid enjoyment and many opportunities of attaining it; who felt all the thrill of health and friendship and ecstatic pleasure. Then came a change,--a year or two with a crippled wing--life, though not abjectly wretched, on the whole a burden, and then the end. You can easily conceive--you can ardently desire--a better lot, but judge fairly the lights and shades of what has been. Does not the happiness on the whole exceed the evil? Can you honestly say that this life has been a curse and not a blessing?--that it would have been better if it had never been called out of nothingness?--that it would have been better if the drama had never been played? It is over now. As you lay in his last home the object of so much love, ask yourself whether, even in a mere human point of view, this parenthesis between two darknesses has not been on the whole productive of more happiness than pain to him and to those around him.