e then, and
what Service do we owe to thee, oh gracious Father, who hast, we hope,
received them into thine House above, and art now entertaining them
there with unknown Delight, tho' our former Methods of Commerce with
them be cut off! "Lord," should each of us say in such a Case, "I
would take what thou art doing to my Child as done to my self, and as
a Specimen and Earnest of what shall shortly be done." _It is_
therefore _well_.

IT only remains, that I conclude with a few Hints of farther
Improvement.

1. LET pious Parents, who have lost hopeful Children _in a maturer
Age_, join with others in saying, _It is well_.

MY Friends, the Reasons which I have been urging at large, are common
to you with us; and permit me to add, that as your Case has its
peculiar Distress, it has, I think, in a yet greater Degree, its
peculiar Consolations too.

I KNOW you will say, that it is inexpressibly grievous and painful, to
part with Children who were grown up into most amiable Friends, who
were your Companions in the Ways of GOD, and concerning whom you had a
most agreeable Prospect, that they would have been the Ornaments and
Supports of Religion in the rising Age, and extensive Blessings to the
World, long after you had quitted it. These Reasonings have,
undoubtedly, their Weight; and they have so, when considered in a very
different View. Must you not acknowledge _it is well_, that you
enjoyed so many Years of Comfort in them? that you reaped so much
solid Satisfaction from them? and saw those Evidences of a Work of
Grace upon their Hearts, which give you such abundant Reason to
conclude that they are now received to that Inheritance of Glory, for
which they were so apparently _made meet_? Some of them, perhaps, had
already quitted their Father's House: As for others, had GOD spared
their Lives, they might have been transplanted into Families of their
own: And if, instead of being removed to another House, or Town, or
County, they are taken by GOD into another World, is that a Matter of
so great Complaint; when that World is so much better, and you are
yourselves so near it? I put it to your Hearts, Christians, Would you
rather have chosen to have buried them in their Infancy, or never to
have known the Joys and the Hopes of a Parent, now you know the
Vicissitude of Sorrow, and of Disappointment? But perhaps, you will
say, that you chiefly grieve for that Loss which the World has
sustained by the Removal of those, fr