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The Lambs All Safe; Or, The Salvation of Children ...
The Lambs All Safe Or The Salvation of Children Author:Alexander Balloch Grosart Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE LAMBS ALL SAFE, At first it is hard for a bereaved Father p I The Be an( Mother to think of more reavement. than the stern, blank fact, that ra' ... more »their ,Httle ones, are gone ' They are not.' Tear-dimmed eyes can rise no higher than the loss. It is a fine, tender, pathetic phrase that, of the old Hebrews, whether from the lips of hoary Jacob, in his broken cry, ' Joseph is not: Simeon is not;' or as told of Rachel, ' weeping for her children,' and refusing ' to be comforted for her children, because they were not' (Jer. xxxi. 15). Nevertheless brood over it, keep looking at it alone, and sorrow turns to sin, and the soft rain of tears sheaths avenging lightnings. Murmuring comes, and deepens into ' fretting,' even pining and repining, and these into despondency, and despondency into despair and ' unbelief—as one has seen theazure, white-maned wave driven before the sudden Storm swell into the surge, and the surge rush passionate into the 'froary' breakers, and the breakers in their fury welcome the Tempest, with its Shipwreck and Castaways.' They are not!'. It is the old old Story of Bereavement: the Shadow is on the Cradle—the little chair is vacant— the child-dress is no more to be worked on. Alas! alas! The cooing chirupping voices, and the pattering feet, and the eyes of wondering, and the finger-clasping ' wee' hands—gone, all gone. ' Home' is very empty, very very lonely, very still. For a while these will shut out all else—will recur, and nothing save the loss can be thought of, with its darkening of Hopes and Prayers, Purposes and Plans that stretched away onward, ay, and upward. Par be it from me to chide harshly, to intrude upon, the Bacredness of sorrow, with voluble words. But, Weeping Father! Weeping Mother! ' Suffer the word of exhortation.'—You will...« less