over again the last words she can ever speak to you. When I
think about leaving you all, two things press heavily upon me: one,
your father's sorrow (for you, my darlings, after missing me a little
while, will soon forget your loss), the other, the everlasting welfare
of my children. I know how long and deep the former will be, and I
know that he will look to his children to be almost his only earthly
comfort. You know (for I am certain that it will have been so), how
he has devoted his life to you and taught you and laboured to lead you
to all that is right and good. Oh, then, be sure that you _are_ his
comforts. Let him find you obedient, affectionate and attentive to
his wishes, upright, self-denying and diligent; let him never blush
for or grieve over the sins and follies of those who owe him such a
debt of gratitude, and whose first duty it is to study his happiness.
You have both of you a name which must not be disgraced, a father and
a grandfather of whom to show yourselves worthy; your respectability
and well-doing in life rest mainly with yourselves, but far, far
beyond earthly respectability and well-doing, and compared with which
they are as nothing, your eternal happiness rests with yourselves. You
know your duty, but snares and temptations from without beset you, and
the nearer you approach to manhood the more strongly will you feel
this. With God's help, with God's word, and with humble hearts you
will stand in spite of everything, but should you leave off seeking in
earnest for the first, and applying to the second, should you learn to
trust in yourselves, or to the advice and example of too many around
you, you will, you must fall. Oh, 'let God be true and every man a
liar.' He says you cannot serve Him and Mammon. He says that strait
is the gate that leads to eternal life. Many there are who seek to
widen it; they will tell you that such and such self-indulgences are
but venial offences--that this and that worldly compliance is
excusable and even necessary. The thing _cannot be_; for in a hundred
and a hundred places He tells you so--look to your Bibles and seek
there whether such counsel is true--and if not, oh, 'halt not between
two opinions,' if God is the Lord follow Him; only be strong and of a
good courage, and He will never leave you nor forsake you. Remember,
there is not in the Bible