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MY DEAR E.

LETTER XXV.

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NEXT to the sick, the afflicted of your congregation will have the strongest claims upon your pastoral sympathies and advice. As surely as man goeth to his long home, do the mourners go about the streets." The badges of mourning will always be before your eyes on the Sabbath. Ere they are laid aside by one family, they will be put on by another. Though you were to live and preach half a century, the fountain of tears would never be dried up. Look round upon your flock when you will, there will be those present who have just buried some dear friend, and who are bemoaning themselves daily in secret places. "My soul is full of troubles. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me. Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction. Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise thee? Lord, why castest thou off my soul? Why hidest thou thy face from me? I am afflicted and ready to die, from my youth up: while I suffer thy terrors, I am distracted. Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off. They come round about me daily like waters; they compassed me about together. Lover and friend. hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness. Deep calleth unto deep, at the noise

of thy water-spouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me."

The afflicted, to whom you will be called to administer the consolations of religion, will be of all classes, ages and conditions in life-the rich and the poor, the young and the old, parents and children, the widow and the fatherless. And they will differ as much in their characters, as they do in their ages and outward circumstances. Some of them will be God's dear children, and while they smart under his chastening rod, will have grace given them to say with Job, "the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." Others, whose piety cannot reasonably be questioned, you will find "so troubled that they cannot look up," and rather trying to be resigned to the will of God, than prepared to say, "It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good." Others you will find shut ́up in their dark chambers, strangers to the hopes and consolations of the gospel, and refusing to be comforted. Some will weep their eyes away over their crushed and buried hopes, and others will sit down in a kind of sullen resentment against God, for taking away their idols. If they do not curse him with their lips, you will see at a glance, that their hearts are quite as full of rebellion as of sorrow. Here you will find an aged pair mourning over the early death of a son, who was their only earthly prop; and in another part of the town you will find grief, too big for utterance, brooding over the tragical end of a profligate child. In one street, as you enter the house, the stifled sighs of the widow, and the loud sobs of her

fatherless children will strike your ears, and in another, you will find yourself surrounded by weeping orphans, who have neither father nor mother left to comfort them.

Does the bare thought of scenes like these make you sad? Do you shrink back from these mournful offices? Are you ready to exclaim, "O Lord, I cannot speak, for I am a child?" You will often feel as if you could not go to the house of mourning, and when you arrive there, you will sometimes find such deep and inconsolable affliction, that you will not know what to say. I can enter into your feelings perfectly. I have in many instances remained silent for a long time, under the most painful consciousness, that whatever sympathies I might attempt to offer would come so far short of what the stricken heart needed, as to be offered utterly in vain. I know of no better rule in such trying cases than to follow the promptings of nature. When Job's three friends met at his house, "to mourn with him and comfort him," instead of addressing him, as they had intended, they lifted up their voices and wept, and "sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him, for they saw that his grief was very great." This was nature; and like the friends of Job, you can weep with the afflicted, if you cannot comfort them. Mingling your tears with theirs will touch their hearts, when the kindest words would but aggravate their distress, and will prepare the way for whatever condolence, advice, or instruction they may afterwards require.

The best preparation you can make for visiting the

afflicted is, to store your memory with appropriate passages of Scripture, that you may "give to every one a portion in due season ;" and by prayer, to get your own heart into a right frame before you go. A few minutes spent in your closet, or in ejaculatory prayer on the way, will help you exceedingly. The main difficulty, except in such extreme cases as I have above alluded to, arises from want of preparation on the part of the pastor himself. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." You will rarely want for words, if your heart is full. And here let me advise you, always to keep suitable tracts by you, that, when you go to the house of mourning, you may select one or more to carry along, and leave with the family. If this were done by every pastor, I have no doubt thousands would be comforted and savingly benefited by these little unpretending messengers of consolation. There are many small volumes also, written on purpose for mourners, with which you should acquaint yourself, and which you should recommend to your people, where you think they are needed. Reading passages from them as well as from the Scriptures, or referring to them, when they are not at hand, will often suggest interesting trains of remark, where you would otherwise be at a loss for the most suitable topics.

Sometimes, when you might find enough to say, it will be your privilege to sit still and listen to the outpourings of pious resignation from the stricken heart of the chastened believer. You will then be the learner, and not the teacher, and will have the greatest occasion, when you retire, to bless God for

putting you into such a school, and giving you so rich a lesson. It may humble you to see how far inferior your own attainments in the divine life are; and this will be a great blessing. It was, if I remember right, a remark of Dr. Backus, afterwards President of Hamilton College, that he never felt so small in his life, as he did in the presence of an aged widow, who had just lost her only son, on whom she was entirely dependent. Her pastor went to comfort her, expecting to find her crushed by the sudden stroke. But he found her so calm, so cheerful, so resigned, so confiding, so heavenly-minded,that he could scarcely open his mouth. "I find," said she, "that God requires all my heart, and I am determined he shall have it." Such a privilege, should you ever be permitted to enjoy it, will compensate you for a thousand painful interviews with mourners of an entirely different class.

Sometimes you will find the children of God ready to sink under his chastising hand, and crying out, with the man of Uz in his great spiritual conflict, "O that I knew where I might find him, that I might come unto his sanctuary. Behold I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him on the left hand where he doth work, but I cannot behold him he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him." In such cases you will quote the promises. You will pour the balm of consolation into the heart of the afflicted and desponding believer. You will exhort him to rise and shake himself from the dust, and to sing with the Psalmist, Why art thou cast down, O my soul, why art thou

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