The Almond-Tree in Blossom

“The almond-tree shall flourish.” — Ecclesiastes xii., 5.

IN January, Palestine is adorned with the blossoming of the almond -tree. It breathes its life into that winter month as a promise of God sometimes lights up and sweetens the coldness and desolation of a sorrowing spirit. It was not a useless tree, made just to bloom and die, or, like the willow by the water-courses, to stand weeping into the stream, but it disputed with terebinth and cassia for a high place in the commerce of the world. Its wealth bore down the dromedaries of the desert, and in ships of Tarshish struggled with the sea. Its rugged trunk parted into gracefulness of branch, and bnrst into a lavishness of bloom, till the Temple imitated it in the golden candlestick, and Jeremiah beheld its branches shaking in his dream. The pomegranate had more pretentious color, and rung out its fragrance with red blossoming bells, but the almond-tree stood in simple white, as if, while born of earth, it aspired to take on the apparel of those who dwell in “raiment exceeding white” so as no fuller on earth can white them. When the almond-tree was in full bloom, it must have looked like some tree before our window on a winter’s morning, after a nightfall of snow, when its brightness is almost in¬ sufferable, every stem a white and feathery plume. A row of almond-trees in full bloom must have roused up

* Commemorative of David T. Talmage, Esq.

all the soul’s sense of purity; and when they began to scatter their blossoms, as one by one they fell, it must have seemed like the first straggling flakes of a chill day, coming thicker and faster, until the herbage, still deeply tinged with autumnal coloring, is covered, and the mountains that were as scarlet become as white as snow.

Now you are ready to see the meaning of the text. Solomon was giving a full-length portrait of an aged man. By striking figures of speech, he sets forth his trembling and decrepitude, and then comes to describe the whiteness of his locks by the blossoming of the al¬ mond-tree. It is the master-touch of the picture, for I see in that one sentence not only the appearance of the hair, but an announcement of the beauty of old age. The white locks of a bad man are but the gathered frosts of the second death, but “a hoary head is a crown of glory” if it be found in the way of righteousness. There may be no color in the cheek, no lustre in the eye, no spring in the step, no firmness in the voice, and yet around the head of every old man whose life has been upright and Christian there hovers a glory brighter than ever shook in the white tops of the almond-tree. If the voice quiver, it is because God is changing it into a tone fit for the celestial choral. If the back stoop, it is only be¬ cause the body is just about to lie down in peaceful sleep. If the hand tremble, it is because God is unloosing it from worldly disappointments to clasp it on ringing harp and waving palm. If the hair has turned, it is only the gray light of heaven’s dawn streaming through the scant locks. If the brow, once adorned by a luxuriance of au¬ burn or raven, is smitten with baldness, it is only because God is preparing a place to set the everlasting crown.

The falling of this aged Christian’s staff will be the signal for the heavenly gate to swing open. The scatter¬ ing of the almond blossoms will only discover the setting of the fruit. Elijah’s flaming equipage were too tame for this ascending spirit. The arms of Jesus are .grand¬ er than bounding horses of fire!

I have stood for the last few days as under the power of an enchantment. Last Friday a week, at eighty-three years of age, my father exchanged earth for heaven. The wheat was ripe, and it has been harvested. No painter’s pencil or poet’s rhythm could describe that magnificent sunsetting. It was no hurricane blast let loose, but a gale from heaven, that drove into the dust the blossoms of that almond-tree.

There are lessons for me to learn, and also for you, for many of you knew him. The child of his old age, I come to-night to pay a humble tribute to him who, in the hour of my birth, took me into his wTatchful care, and whose parental faithfulness, combined with that of my mother, was the means of bringing my erring feet to the cross, and kindling in my soul anticipation of immortal blessedness. If I failed to speak, methinks the old family Bible, that I brought home with me, would rebuke my silence, and the very walls of my youthful home would tell the story of my ingratitude. I must speak, though it be with broken utterance, and in terms which may seem too strong for those who never had an opportunity of gathering the fruit of this luxuriant almond-tree.

1st. In my father’s old age was to be seen the beauty of a cheerful spirit.

I never remember to have heard him make a gloomy

expression. This was not because he had no perception of the pollutions of society. He abhorred any thing like impurity, or fraud, or double-dealing. He never failed to lift up his voice against sin, when he saw it.’ He was terrible in his indignation against wrong, and had an iron grip for the throat of him who trampled on the helpless. Better meet a lion robbed of her whelps than him, if you had been stealing the bread from the mouth of the fatherless. It required all the placidity of my mother’s voice to calm him when once the mountain storm of his righteous wrath was in full blast; while as for himself, he would submit to more imposition, and say nothing, than any man I ever knew.

But, while sensitive to the evils of society, he felt confident that all would be righted. When he prayed, you could hear in the very tones of his voice the expectation that Christ Jesus would utterly demolish all iniquity, and fill the earth with his glory. This Christian man was not a misanthrope, did not think that every thing was going to ruin, considered the world a very good place to live in. He never sat moping or despondent, but took things as they were, knowing that God could and would make them better. When the heaviest surge of calamity came upon him, he met it with as cheerful a countenance as ever a bather at the beach met the incoming Atlantic, rising up on the other side the wave stronger than when it smote him. Without ever being charged with frivolity, he sang, and whistled, and laughed. He knew about all the cheerful tunes that were ever printed in old “Hew Brunswick Collection,” and the “Shumway,” and the sweetest melodies that Thomas Hastings ever composed. I think that every pillar in the Somerville and Boundbrook churches knew his happy voice. He took the pitch of sacred song on Sabbath morning, and lost it not through all the week. I have heard him plowing amid the aggravations of a “new ground,” serving writs, examining deeds, going to arrest criminals, in the house and by the way, at the barn and in the street. When the church choir would break down, every body looked around to see if he were not ready with “Woodstock,” “Mount Pisgah,” or “Uxbridge.” And when all his familiar tunes failed to express the joy of his soul, he would take up his own pen, draw five long lines across the sheet, put in the notes, and then to the tune that* he called “Boundbrook” begin to sing,

“As when the weary traveler gains
The height of some o’erlooking hill,

His heart revives if, ’cross the plains,

He eyes his home, though distant still:

“Thus, when the Christian pilgrim views,

By faith, his mansion in the skies,

The sight his fainting strength renews,

And wings his speed to reach the prize.

“’Tis there, he says, I am to dwell
With Jesus in the realms of day:

There I shall hid my cares farewell,

And he will wipe my tears away.”

But few families fall heir to so large a pile of well-studied note-books. He was ready at proper times for all kinds of innocent amusement. He often felt a merriment that not only touched the lips, but played upon every fibre of the body, and rolled down into the very depths of his soul with long reverberations. Ho one that I ever knew understood more fully the science of a good laugh. He was not only quick to recognize hilari-THE ALMOND-TREE IN BLOSSOM.

t y when created by others, but was always ready to do his share toward making it. Before extreme old age, he could outrun and outleap any of his children. He did not hide his satisfaction at having outwalked some one who boasted of his pedestrianism, or at having been able to swing the scythe after all the rest of the harvesters had dropped from exhaustion, or at having, in legislative hall, tripped up some villainous scheme for robbing the public treasury. We never had our ears boxed, as some children I wot of, for the. sin of being happy. In long winter nights, it was hard to tell who enjoyed sportful¬ ness the better, the children who romped the floor, or the parents who, with lighted countenance, looked at them. Great indulgence and leniency characterized his family rule, but the remembrance of at least one correction more emphatic than pleasing proves that he wras not like Eli of old, who had wayward sons and restrained them not. In the multitude of his witticisms there were no flings at religion, no caricatures of good men, no trifling with the things of eternity. His laughter was not the “crackling of thorns under a pot,” but the merry heart that doeth good like a medicine. For this all the children in the community knew him; and to the last day of his walking out, when they saw him coming down the lane, shouted, “Here comes grandfather!” Ho gall, no acerbity, no hypercriticism. If there was a bright side to any thing, he always saw it; and his name, in all the places where he dwelt, will long be a synonyme for exhilaration of spirit.

But whence’ this cheerfulness? Some might ascribe it all to natural disposition. Ho doubt there is such a thing as sunshine of temperament. God gives more brightness to the almond-tree than to the cypress. While the pool putrefies under the summer sun, God slips the rill off of the rocks with a frolicsomeness that fills the mountain with echo. No doubt constitutional structure had much to do with this cheerfulness. He had, by a life of sobriety, preserved his freshness and vigor. You know that good habits are better than speaking-tubes to the ear; better than a staff to the hand; better than loz¬ enges to the throat; better than warm baths to the feet; better than bitters for the stomach. His lips had not been polluted nor his brain befogged by the fumes of the noxious weed that has sapped the life of whole generations, sending even ministers of the Gospel to untimely graves, over which the tombstone declared, “Sacrificed by overwork in the Lord’s vineyard,” when, if the marble had not lied, it would have said, “Killed by villainous tobacco!” He abhorred any thing that could intoxicate, being among the first in this country to join the crusade against alcoholic beverage. When urged, during a severe sickness, to take some .stimulus, he said, “No; if I am to die, let me die sober!” The swill of the brew¬ ery had never been poured around the roots of this thrifty almond. To the last week of his life his ear could catch a child’s whisper, and at fourscore years his eyes refused spectacles, although he would sometimes have to hold the book off on the other side of the light, as octo¬ genarians are wont to do. No trembling of the hands, no rheum in the eyes, no knocking together of the knees, no hobbling on crutches with what polite society terms rheumatism in the feet, but what every body knows is nothing but gout. Death came, not to fell the gnarled trunk of a tree worm-eaten and lightning-blasted, but to *R 2

hew down a Lebanon cedar, whose fall made the mountains tremble and the heavens ring.

But physical health could not account for half of this sunshine. Sixty-four years ago a coal from the heavenly altar had kindled a light that shone brighter and brighter to the perfect day. Let Almighty grace for nearly three quarters of a century triumph in a man’s soul, and do you wonder that he is happy? For twice the length of your life and mine he had sat in the bowTer of the promises, plucking the round, ripe clusters of Eshcol. While others bit their tongue for thirst, he stood at the wells of salvation, and put his lips to the bucket that came up dripping with the fresh, cool, sparkling waters of eternal life. This joy wTas not that which breaks in the bursting bubble of the Champagne -glass, or that which is thrown out with the orange-peelings of a mid¬ night bacchanalia, but the joy which, planted by a Savior’s pardoning grace, mounts up higher and higher, till it rolls forth in the acclaim of the hundred and forty and four thousand who have broken their last chain and wept their last sorrow. O mighty God, how deep, how wide, how high the joy thou kindlest in the heart of the believer!

Again: We beheld in our father the beauty of a Christian faith.

Let not the account of his cheerfulness give yrou the idea that he never had any trouble. But few men have so serious and overwhelming a life-struggle. He went out into the world without means, and with no educational opportunity save that which was afforded him in the winter months, in an old, dilapidated school-house, from instructors whose chief work was to collect their own salary. Instead of postponing the marriage relation, as modern society compels a young man to postpone it, until lie can earn a fortune, and be able, at commencement of the conjugal relation, to keep a companion like the lilies of the field, that toil not nor spin, though Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these, he chose an early alliance wTith one wTho would not only be able to enjoy the success of life, but who would with her own willing hands help achieve it. And so, while father plowed the fields, and threshed the wheat, and broke the flax, and husked the corn, my mother stood for Solomon’s portraiture when he said, “She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.” So that the limited estate of the New Jersey farmer never foundered on millinery establishments and confectionery shops; and though we were some years of age before wTe heard the trill of a piano, we knew well all about the song of “The Spinning-wheel.” There were no lords, or baronets, or princes in our ancestral line. None wore stars, cockade, or crest. There was once a family coat-of-arms, but we were none of us wise enough to tell its meaning. Do our best, we can not find any thing about our forerunners except that they behaved well, came over from Wales or Holland a good while ago, and died when their time came. Some of them may have had fine equipage and caparisoned postilion, but the most of them were sure

only of footmen. My father started in life belonging to the aristocracy of hard knuckles and homespun, but had this high honor that no one could despise: he was the son of a father who loved God and kept his commandments. What is house of Ilapsburg, or Stuarts, compared with the honor of being a son of the Lord God Almighty? Two eyes, two hands, and two feet were the capital my father started with. For fifteen years an invalid, he had a fearful struggle to support his large family. Nothing but faith in God upheld him. His recital of help afforded and deliverances wrought was more like a romance than a reality. He walked through many a desert, but every morning had its man¬ na, and every night its pillar of fire, and every hard rock a rod that could shatter it into crystal fountains at his feet. More than once he came to his last dollar, but right behind that last dollar he found Him who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and out of the palm of whose hand all the fowls of heaven peck their food, and who hath given to each one of his disciples a warrantee deed for the whole universe in the words, All are tours.”

The path that led him through financial straits prepared him also for sore bereavements. Tlfe infant of days was smitten, and he laid it into the river of death with as much confidence as infant Moses wTas laid into the ark of the Nile, knowing that soon from the royal palace a shining One would come to fetch it.

In an island of the sea, among strangers, almost un¬ attended, death came to a beloved son; and though I remember the darkness that dropped on the household when the black-sealed letter was opened, I remember also the utterances of Christian submission.

Another, bearing his own name, just on the threshold of manhood, his heart beating high with hope, falls into the dust; but above the cries of early widowhood and the desolation of that dark day I hear the patriarch’s prayer commending children and children’s children to the divine sympathy.

But a deeper shadow fell across the old homestead. The “golden wedding” had been celebrated nine years before. My mother looked up, pushed back her spectacles, and said, “Just think of it, father — we have been together fifty-nine years!” The twain stood together like two trees of the forest with interlocked branches. Their affections had taken deep root together in many a kindred grave. Side by side in life’s great battle they had fought the good fight and “won the day. But death comes to un joint this alliance. God will not any longer let her suffer mortal ailments. The reward of righteousness is ready, and it must be paid. But what tearing apart! What rending up! What will the aged man do without this other to lean on? Who can so well under¬ stand how to sympathize and counsel? What voice so cheering as hers to conduct him down the steep of old age? “Oh,” she said, in her last moments, “father, if

you and I could only go together, how pleasant it would be!” But the hush of death came down one autumnal afternoon, and for the first time in all my life, on my arrival home, I received no maternal greeting, no answer of the lips, no pressure of the hand. God had taken her.

In this overwhelming shock the patriarch stood confident, reciting the promises and attesting the divine good¬ ness. Oh, sirs, that was faith! faith! faith! “Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory!”

Finally, I notice that in my father’s old age was to be seen the beauty of Christian activity.

He had not retired from the field. He had been busy so long, you could not expect him idle now. The faith I have described was not an idle expectation that sits with its hands in its pockets idly waiting, but a feeling which gathers up all the resources of the soul, and hurls them upon one grand design. He was among the first who toiled in Sabbath-schools, and never failed to speak the praise of these institutions. Ho storm or darkness ever kept him away from prayer-meeting. In the neighborhood where he lived, for years he held a devotional meeting. Oftentimes the only praying man present be¬ fore a handful of attendants, he would give out the hymn, read the lines, conduct the music, and pray. Then read the Scriptures, and pray again. Then lead forth in the Doxology with an enthusiasm as if there were a thou¬ sand people present, and all the Church members had been doing their duty. He went forth visiting the sick, burying the dead, collecting alms for the poor, inviting the ministers of religion to his household, in which there was, as in the house of Shunem, a little room over the wall, with bed and candlestick for any passing Elisha. He never shuddered at the sight of a subscription-paper, and not a single great cause of benevolence has arisen within the last half century which he did not bless with his beneficence. Oh! this was not a barren almond-tree that blossomed. His charity was not like tfie bursting of the bud of a famous tree in the South, that fills the whole forest with its racket, nor was it a clumsy thing, like the fruit in some tropical clime, that crashes down, almost knocking the life out of those who gather it, for in his case the right hand knew not what the left hand did. The churches of God, in whose service he toiled, have arisen as one man to declare his faithfulness and to mourn their loss. He stood in the front of the holy war, and the courage which never trembled or winced in the presence of temporal danger induced him to dare all things for God. In church matters he was not afraid to be shot at. Ordained, not by the laying on of human hands, but by the imposition of a Savior’s love, he preach¬ ed by his life, in official position, and legislative hall, and commercial circles, a practical Christianity. He showed that there was such a thing as honesty in politics. He slandered no party, stuffed no ballot-box, forged no natu¬ ralization papers, intoxicated no voters, told no lies, sur-. rendered no principle, countenanced no demagogism. He called things by their right names; and what others styled prevarication, exaggeration, misstatement, or hyperbole, he called a lie. Though he was far from being undecided in his views, and never professed neutrality, or had any consort with those miserable men who boast how well they can walk on both sides of a dividing-line and be on neither, yet even in the excitements of election canvass, when his name was hotly discussed in public journals, I do not think his integrity was ever assault¬ ed. Starting every morning with a chapter of the Bible, and his whole family around him on their knees, he for¬ got not, in the excitements of the world, that he had a God to serve and a heaven to win. The morning prayer came up on one side of the day, and the evening prayer on the other side, and joined each other in an arch above his head, under the shadow of which he walked all the day. The Sabbath worship extended into Mon-THE ALMOND-TBEE IN BLOSSOM.

day’s conversation, and Tuesday’s bargain, and Wednesday’s mirthfulness, and Thursday’s controversy and Friday’s sociality, and Saturday’s calculation.

Through how many thrilling scenes he had passed! He stood, at Morristown, in the choir that chanted when George Washington was buried; talked with young men whose grandfathers he had held on his knee; watched the progress of John Adams’s administration; denounced, at the time, Aaron Burr’s infamy; heard the guns that celebrated the New Orleans victory; voted against Jackson, but lived long enough to wish we had one just like him; remembered when the first steamer struck the North River with its wheel -buckets; flushed .with excitement in the time of National Banks arfd Sub-Treasury; was startled at the birth of telegraphy; saw the United States grow from a speck on the world’s map, till all nations dip their flag at our passing merchantmen, and our “national airs” have been heard on the steeps of the Himalayas; was born while the revolutionary can¬ non were coming home from Yorktown, and lived to hear the tramp of troops returning from the war of the great Rebellion; lived to speak the names of eighty children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Nearly all his contemporaries gone! Aged Wilberforce said that sailors drink to “friends astern” until half way over the sea, and then drink to “friends ahead.” With him it had for a long time been “friends ahead.” So also with my father. Long and varied pilgrimage! Nothing but sovereign grace could have kept 4iim true, earnest, useful, and Christian through so many exciting scenes.

He worked unweariedly from the sunrise of youth to the sunset of old age, and then in the sweet nightfall of death, lighted by the starry promises, went home, taking his sheaves with him. Mounting from earthly to heavenly service, I doubt not there were a great multitude that thronged heaven’s gate to hail him into the skies — those whose sorrows he had appeased, whose burdens he had lifted, whose guilty souls he had pointed to a pardoning God, whose dying moments he had cheered, whose ascending spirits he had helped up on the wings of sacred music. I should like to have heard that long, loud, triumphant shout of heaven’s welcome. I think that the harps throbbed with another thrill, and the hills quaked with a mightier hallelujah. Hail, ransomed soul! thy race run — thy toil ended. Hail to the coronation!

Now, after- such a life, what sort of death would you have expected? Will God conduct a voyager through so many storms, and then let him get shipwrecked coming up the harbor? Not such a one is my God and Savior. The telegraph thrilled with tidings north, south, east, west, that brought, in the rushing rail-train, his kindred together. The hour for which this aged servant of God had waited patiently had come, and he rejoiced with a joy at which the tongue faltered. There was no turn¬ ing from side to side on the pillow, as if looking for escape from grim pursuers, but a gazing up and around, as if looking out for the chariot of King Jesus. The prayer which the older sons had heard him make forty years ago, asking that at last lie might have “nothing to do but to die,” was literally answered. All his children, save that one which he sent forth with his blessing a few months ago, in the good ship “Surprise,” to proclaim the glories of the Messiah on the other side of the earth, were present — some to pray, some to hold his hand, some to bathe his brow; all to watch, and wTait, and weep, and rejoice. He asked about our children — asked about you. Talked about the past. Expressed his anticipations of the future. Slept sweetly as a child ever slept in the arms of its mother. Then broke forth with the utterance, “Goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life!” The Bible that he had studied for so many years now cast its light far on into the valley, until the very gate of heaven flashed upon his vision. Some one quoted the passage, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” “Of whom I am chief, J” responded the dying Christian. We said, “To live is Christ.” He answered, “To die is gain;” and, lest we did not understand him, he repeated, “To die is gain!” And as if the vision grew more enrapturing, he continued to say, “To die is gain /” Ministers of the Gospel came in, and after the usual greeting, he said, “Pray! pray!”

We sang some of his favorite hymns, such as,

“Jesus can make a dying bed
Feel soft as downy pillows are,

Whilefpn his breast I lean my head,

And breathe my life out sweetly there.”

He would seem almost to stop breathing in order to listen, and then, at the close, wTould signify that he remembered the old tune right well. He said, “I shall be gone soon, but not too soon.” Some one quoted, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” And he replied, “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” “Can you testify of God’s faithfulness?” said another. He answered, “Yes;

I have been young, and now I am old, yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.” He said, “I have it good; I could not have it any better; I feel well; all is well.” Again, and again, and again he repeated, “All is well /” Then, lifting his hand, exclaimed, “Peace! peace!”

On the morning of the 27tli of October, just three years from the day when the soul of his companion sped into the heavens, it was evident that the last moment had come. Softly the news came to all the sleepers in the house, and the quick glance of lights from room to room signaled the coming of the death angel. We took out our watches, and said, “Four o’clock and fifteen minutes /” The pulse fluttered as a tree -branch lifts and falls at the motion of a bird’s wing about to cleave its way into the heavens. No quick start of pain; no glassy stare; but eyelid lightly closed, and calm lip, and white blossoms of the almond-tree. From the stand we turned over the old timepiece that he had carried so long, and which he thought always wTent right, and announced, “Just four o’clock and twenty minutes /” The tides of the cold river rising. Felt of the wrist, but no pulse; of the temples, but no stir; of the htrt, but no action. We listened, but heard nothing. Still! still! The gates of the earthly prison-house silently open wider and wdder. Free! Clear the way for the conquering spirit! Shout upward the tidings!

Four o’clock and thirty minutes! Without a groan or a sigh, he had passed upward into the light. “And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and wTas gathered unto his people.”

The day for burial came. An autumnal Sabbath was let down clear from heaven. At the first gush aof the dawn, we said, “This is just the day in which for a Christian to be buried 1” Fading leaf indeed under foot told of the decaying body, but streaming sunshine spoke of resurrection joy. They came tottering on their staff — old comrades who, in eighteen hundred and twelve, had marched beside him, drilling in the field, ready for heroic strife. They came — the poor whose rent he had paid to keep their children from the blasts of winter. They came — the erring men whom he had bailed out of prison. They came — the children wdio had watched his step, and played with his cane, and had often wondered what new attraction grandfather would unfold from his deep pockets. They came — the ministers of religion who had sat with him in church courts, and planned for the advancement of religion.

Passing along the roads where he had often gone, and by the birthplace of most of his children, we laid him down to rest, just as the sun was setting in the country grave-yard, close beside her with whom for more than half a century he had walked, and prayed, and sung, and counseled. It seamed as if she must speak a greeting. But no voice broke the sod, no whisper ran through the grass, no word %of recognition was uttered. Side by side Jacob and Rachel were buried. Let one willow overarch their graves. Instead of two marble slabs, as though these of whom we speak were twain, let there be but a single shaft, for they were one. Monument not pretentious, but plain, for they were old-fashioned people. On one side the marble set the date of their coming and go¬ ing. On this side the name of David, the husband and father. On that third side the name of Catharine, the wife and mother. Then there will be but one side uncliiseled. How shall we mark it? With story of Christian zeal and self-sacrifice for God? Ho! Father and mother would shake their heads if they were awake to read it. This rather let it be: “The Mokning cometh.” — Isaiah xxi., 12.

Henceforward we shall be orphans. Sad thing, even at manhood, to become fatherless and motherless. Ho one but God can make up for the loss of a father’s counsel and a mother’s tenderness. Hope thou in God! Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Quaint John Bunyan caught a glimpse of the glorious ending of all earthly trial when he said, “Just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them, and behold, the city shone like the sun; the streets were also paved with gold, and in them walked many men with crowns on their heads, and golden harps to sing praises withal. And after that they shut up the gates, which when I had seen I wished myself among themP