Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1876 — Death. [ARTICLE]

Death.

Death, like a mother, stands at the end of the summer day of life to take to his arms earth’s weary children, and open for them the door of rest that they may awake in the bright sunshine of another life. Every night Sleep takes us, folded in her downy mantle, from the busy land of the living, over the borders, into the realms of an unknown world, and with the morning light, we are bom into the new life of another day. We have no dread-of tlxSi death we die daily, which certainly takes us from one world to another, from one life to another. We do not shrink from it, though we must go solitary and alone, and have no promises, shining like lamps along the way, that we shall meet with those we love, and find answer to all the hungry yearnings of our souls within its shtuiowy bounaanea. Nay, it draws the curtains of slumber around us, and shuts us from the clinging arms of lowed ones though they are at our side. It gives us forgetfulness in answer to all our soul’s inmost longings, and morning brings back to us the heavy burden that we laid down, and we must take it up again for the journey of another day, yet we yield to its influence and go down to it peacefully as rivers to the sea. When Sleep’s elder brother, Death, comes, his garments shining with (he beautiful jewels of the promises, in his hand the keys that open the door of that Temple “not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,” his face glowing with the “ glad tidings of great joy” When exile is ended, and the years of bondage, in the “ dark house of the body,” to the “ lusts of the flesh” are finished, and our weary, wandering feet may come nearer home, we struggle and shrink and cling lo these old chains and loads that we have groaned under for years, longing for the day of freedom, and praying that we might be set at liberty, and when the angel has come to open the prison doors we crouch back into the comer of the loathsome old cell instead of rushing out into the glorious freedom of the sunshine that covers the land with the rich fullness of its beauty and its gladness. When one is '** only waiting” why do the tears blind our eyes, and the sound of weeping fill our ears, so we cannot catch the glimmer of white robes through the opening gates of the Eternal City, and hear the glad songs of rejoicing welcome that greet the children returning home to the Father’s house ?

“Day unto day uttcreth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.” We ha e seen the sun go down the west through a gorgeous gateway of gold and purple ana pearl, and rise again in the rosy-tinted chambers of the east. The shining stars have held their high places through the hours of night, with a silence full of music till their light melted in the flush of dawn brought the perfect day. The trees and the grasses and the flowers, the countless seasons and the “eternal years of God,” have been ever as living witnesses before us, teachers full of God’s divinest truth, whispering of things ‘beyond, and as yet we sit in darkness. How long shall these things be with us before we can wait by the river to pass over to the othef side, as a tree heavily laden with fruit, waits in the beautiful dream-days of autumn for the winter to come, or as the white fields of harvest, 1 " ripe and full of golden grain, wait for the gathering sickle of the reaper. —Duff Porter, in Chicago Alliance.