Children in Heaven

[From Rev. E. H. Bickersteth’s “Yesterday, To-day, and For Ever.”

A BABE in glory is a babe for ever. Perfect as spirits, and able to pour forth Their glad hearts in the tongues that angels

use, These nurslings, gathered in God’s nursery, For ever grow in loveliness and love, — Growth is the law of all intelligence, — Yet cannot pass the limit which defines Their being. They have never fought the

fight, Nor borne the heat and burden of the day, Nor staggered underneath the weary cross.

.., Infancy Is one thing, manhood one. And babes,

though part Of the true archetypal house of God Built on the heavenly Zion, are not now, Nor will be ever, massive rocks, rough-hewn, Or ponderous corner-stones, or fluted shafts Of columns, or far-shadowing pinnacles; But rather as the delicate lily-work. By Hiram wrought for Solomon of old, Enwreathed upon the brazen chapiters, Or flowers of lilies round the molten sea. Innumerable flowers thus bloom and blush In heaven..,.

• •••••

The one who nestled in my breast had seen All of earth’s year except the winter snows: Spring, summer, autumn, like sweet dreams

had smiled On her. Eva — or living — was her name; A bud of life folded in leaves and love; The dewy morning-star of summer days; The golden lamp of fireside happy hours; TJie little ewe-lamb nestling by our side;

The dove whose cooing echoed in our

hearts; The sweetest chord upon our harp of praise ‘. The quiet spring, the rivulet of joy.

Many of my readers will doubtless thank me for adding to these striking lines, the following exquisite letter of Archbishop Leighton, addressed to a bereaved brother: —

“I am glad of your health, and recovery of your little ones; but, indeed, it was a sharp stroke of a pen that told me your pretty Johnny ^2iS> dead; and I felt it truly more than, to my remembrance, I did the death of any child in my lifetime. Sweet thing! — and is he so quickly laid to sleep? Happy he! Though we shall have no more the pleasure of his lisping and laucrhincr, he shall have no more the pain of crying, nor of being sick, nor of dying; and hath wholly escaped the trouble of schooling, and all other sufferings of boys, and the riper and deeper griefs of riper years, — this poor life being all along nothing but a linked chain of many sorrows and many deaths. Tell my dear sister she is now much more akin to the other world; and this wdll quickly be passed to us all. Johnny is but gone an hour or tsvo sooner to bed, as children use to do, and we are undressing to follow. And the more we put oif the love of this present world, and all things «ifperfluous, beforehand, we shall have the less to do when we lie down. It shall refresh me to hear from you at your leisure.

“Sir, your affectionate brother,

“R. Leighton. Edinboro’, January 16th, 1677.”