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14

To a Friend who had lost her Father

August 30, 1888.

I have only just received 's letter, telling of your sad and sudden loss. A protracted illness seems to prepare one for the end, though when it comes, even after months of illness, it always seems sudden and terrible. I think death is always terrible, even in what is looked upon as its most peaceful and calmest forms. The one thing that Christian faith enables us to do, is to hold fast by God through it all in trust and faith-seeing through the grave as Christianity alone can enable us to do, and believing in God's goodness and mercy. I think the one thing we have to trust to and believe in with all our might is God's love for us. 'He knoweth whereof we are made and remembereth that we are but dust, and is not extreme to mark what is done amiss.' We talk of charitable judgments, but what man judges another with the charity that God does-seeing excuses and goodness when no eye but His could see it. Let nothing shake you in that— he whom I love is gone to One who loves him more than I do, and who will be more tender to him-He who has proved His Love-first by creating and then by dying for him. I think we often forget the necessary Love involved in the act of creation. Everyone loves what he makes and overestimates his own handicraft. God too must love what He has brought into existence and given life to.

God forbid, my dear child, that I should tell you not to weep or grieve for him who is taken from you. I would only say, 'Sorrow not as those that have no

hope.' When your grief is deepest, still look up, and if you shed your tears at the Feet of Christ there will be no bitterness, no lack of faith in them, and when your heart is sorest you will have peace in the midst of it all. I know Him in Whom I have believed' -how much that involves. Do not think that God would take anyone at a disadvantage, or that because death came suddenly it was not directed by God's Love as much as if it came after months of preparation. We may be quite sure that death takes us at our best, not our worst; it is the character as it stands at the time of judgment, not merely the last moments or the last days, that God looks at. The many appearances of death, more or less frightful, are not the things that we are to dwell upon so much as the going forth of the soul with the preparation and discipline of years.

I hope when you are able you will write me a line and tell me whatever you care to tell me; you know how interested I shall be, and you may be sure that I shall remember your father at the Altar. What a comfort to believe in the progress of the soul after death its growth in knowledge and love—the inpouring of light-and that we are not cut off from the acts of greatest charity towards those who are gone before, but can help them by our prayers and alms.

15

To the Same on the Loss of her Mother

January 8, 1895.

Words seem very poor things at such a time of trouble as yours, and yet they are all one can use

to tell of one's sympathy. Sorrow and suffering do draw friends together, as our Lord chose them as the way to draw us to Himself. Death is always terrible and always come unexpectedly, however long one has been expecting and preparing for it-indeed, those long times of nursing only make the gap more terribly felt when it comes. It is not wrong to feel it keenly if only our tears and complaints can be poured forth at the Feet of our Lord--'Lord, He whom Thou lovest is sick' and 'If Thou hadst been here my brother had not died.' And then He points on to the Resurrection. That is the source of comfort, the certainty of what lies beyond-we do not hope, we know; if only He will come to us in our trouble and sorrow and point to the Resurrection, show it to us, make us feel and know the rest beyond the grave, our tears may flow, but all the bitterness will be gone. If Faith begins looking with tears into the grave the grave will grow lighter, we shall see the vision of angels. 'Your sorrow shall be turned into joy'-that Good Friday was a terrible night for the Apostles, but it tested their faith and trust, and it was literally turned into joy. Don't think or say that your life is ended and its employment gone-such a training as you have had will help to make your life full of usefulness and unselfish work. Sorrow, indeed, does either drive one in upon oneself and hurt one, or drives one out to others; it gives the key to most people's hearts, it breaks down barriers and gives just that touch of human sympathy which nothing else can give. I do not fear for you-God will take care of you and fill your life full of the power of being a blessing to many yet.

16

To another Friend who had lost her Father

February 23, 1914.

I only heard on Saturday of your great loss, and want to tell you that you have all my sympathy and affection in your sorrow. You will miss him even more than an ordinary person would, because of your constant care for him during all these years of illhealth. I did not know that he had been more unwell than usual, so that it was all the more of a shock.

How long ago it seems since I first knew him, and used to think then he could not live long; and I used to enjoy so much his dry humour and admire his patience in those long attacks of the heart. Well, my dear child, the only real source of consolation at such a time is in one's faith and trust in God. Death brings the other world so bewilderingly vividly before us, and imagination feels so powerless to form any picture of the life beyond the grave, that when anyone whom one knows intimately dies, the mind is apt to strain itself in the effort to follow and realise what kind of life it is. You know his interests and tastes and ways of thought, and you feel bewildered to place him in conditions which are impossible to realise. But there is one thing you can rest upon, that he is with our Lord Who loved him and died for him, and under His loved hand he is being led on to more perfect knowledge and a more complete happiness than he has ever known here. We know so little of details, and perhaps if we knew more it would make it all the more puzzling; but you knew him and you know our Lord, and what are any details compared with the safety and security with which you can leave

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him in His hands. I will remember him at the Altar, and though I do not often see you I never can forget all the kindness you showed me years ago.

God bless you.

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17

To the Same

June 12, 1914.

Thank you so much for sending me the little memoir. It is so good and simple and true. I cannot imagine a greater trial than for a man to know he had talents and to be constantly kept back by ill-health from using them. I used to feel how terribly difficult it was for him to be so often stopped in the middle of his work and laid aside, and he certainly bore it like a man and a Christian. I never heard him complain, and he certainly never showed the smallest sign of being embittered. And how you must miss him-more and more at first, and all the more because you had to look after him so much. After all, it's the daily round of life with all the little things that make it up from morning to evening and the intimate companionship that is woven more and more closely year by year-it's this that is broken in upon, and whatever else we look forward to in the other world, it will not be this-and you must sometimes wonder if Heaven itself can make up for the joy of life, with all its disappointments and troubles, in this dear old earth. The very perfection of the other world, I suppose, often makes us feel as if we prefer those we have loved and known well, imperfections and all! . . .

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