“Indeed,” he writes, “it was a sharp stroke of a pen, that told me your pretty Johnny was dead: and I felt it truly more than, to my remembrance, I did the death of any child in my lifetime. Sweet thing! and is he so quickly laid to sleep? Happy he! Though we shall have no more the pleasure of his lisping and laughing, he shall have no more the pain of crying, nor of being sick, nor of dying: and hath wholly escaped the trouble of schooling, and all other sufferings of boys, and the riper and deeper griefs of riper years, this poor life being all along but a linked chain of many sorrows and many deaths. Tell my dear sister she is now much more akin to the other world; and this will quickly be passed to us all. John is but gone an hour or two sooner to bed, as children use to do, and we are undressing to follow.”
In another letter the same writer says of himself—
“I am grown exceedingly uneasy in writing and speaking, yea, almost in thinking, when I reflect how cloudy our clearest thoughts are; but, I think again what other can we do, till the day break and the shadows flee away, as one that lieth awake in the night must be thinking; and one thought that will likely oftenest return, when by all other thoughts he finds little relief, is, when will it be day?”
You see he would have wondered to be spoken of thus—“Poor Leighton has gone.” Answer, “How very sad,”—when at last he had attained to that day.
Let me show, by another noble instance, that, as Winter days, when they come, bring often unforeseen beauty and gladness with them, so not even the anticipation is always necessarily sad to the eye of exalted faith. Remember you those words of the mighty Apostle of Christ—when the Winter time was yet somewhat removed—with their more than calm anticipation of it, their deep warmth of joy?
“To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. What I shall choose I wot not.
For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better.”
And then the stirring tones of exultation and triumph, as now but few leaves were left, and Winter days were even at the door.
“I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.
I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day.”
Here is an aurora borealis flashing up to the heavens in light and splendour, over the wide snow landscape of Winter days.
