they are to be the partners and actors in that great work
of spiritual regeneration of which Jesus is the head.

What then? May we look among the band of ministering spirits for our own
departed ones? Whom would God be more likely to send us? Have we in
heaven a friend who knew us to the heart's core? a friend to whom we
have unfolded our soul in its most secret recesses? to whom we have
confessed our weaknesses and deplored our griefs? If we are to have a
ministering spirit, who better adapted? Have we not memories which
correspond to such a belief? When our soul has been cast down, has never
an invisible voice whispered, "There is lifting up"? Have not gales and
breezes of sweet and healing thought been wafted over us, as if an angel
had shaken from his wings the odors of paradise? Many a one, we are
confident, can remember such things--and whence come they? Why do the
children of the pious mother, whose grave has grown green and smooth
with years, seem often to walk through perils and dangers fearful and
imminent as the crossing Mohammed's fiery gulf on the edge of a drawn
sword, yet walk unhurt? Ah! could we see that attendant form, that face
where the angel conceals not the mother, our question would be answered.

It may be possible that a friend is sometimes taken because the Divine
One sees that his ministry can act more powerfully from the unseen world
than amid the infirmities of mortal intercourse. Here the soul,
distracted and hemmed in by human events and by bodily infirmities,
often scarce knows itself, and makes no impression on others
correspondent to its desires. The mother would fain electrify the heart
of her child; she yearns and burns in vain to make her soul effective on
its soul, and to inspire it with a spiritual and holy life; but all her
own weaknesses, faults, and mortal cares cramp and confine her, till
death breaks all fetters; and then, first truly alive, risen, purified,
and at rest, she may do calmly, sweetly, and certainly, what, amid the
tempests and tossings of life, she labored for painfully and fitfully.
So, also, to generous souls, who burn for the good of man, who deplore
the shortness of life, and the little that is permitted to any
individual agency on earth, does this belief open a heavenly field.
Think not, father or brother, long laboring for man, till thy sun stands
on the western mountains,--think not that thy day in this world is over.
Perhaps, like Jesus, thou hast lived a