Page:Beauty for Ashes.djvu/97

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PRACTICAL DISTINCTIONS.
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trine; or if not, we may easily infer them. We know that it contains no solace for that weeping mother, from whose tender embrace death has snatched away some bright-eyed cherub. We know that it cannot suppress one sigh, nor lessen one sorrow, nor mitigate one pang, nor minister one drop of comfort to her stricken soul. Nay, more:—we know that even a doubt about the salvation and happiness of her departed child—a belief in the bare possibility that her little one may be reckoned among the "reprobates," and have its eternal abode in hell, is calculated to wring with unutterable anguish that tender mother's heart. But the New doctrine, on the contrary, while it accords with reason, and Scripture, and God's matchless love, is full of sweetest consolation to the afflicted. It ministers support and comfort to bereaved parents, as no other doctrine can. It tells that fond and weeping mother, as she bends for the last time over the body of her darling child, that her little one is still alive—ay, and happier, too, than ever before; that it has gone, from the cold dull earth to the warm bright heavens—gone to dwell with the angels, and that in due time it will itself become an angel; that, as soon as its little spirit fled its earthly tenement, and its eyes opened on the scenes of the spirit-world, it beheld an angel mother smiling on it, and ready to fold it in her loving arms; that there that angel mother will love and tend it, and angel teachers instruct and guide it; that there it will play with other children, who are all learning to be good and wise;