Who was this, that, under these comfortable words, looked peacefully upward? It was one who was learning to trust God; taught it, as most of us are, by being placed in circumstances where there is nothing else to trust.
It is not for us to portray all that passes in the human soul when it is brought into vivid communion with its Maker. It is enough for us to know that this sorrowful heart was made to exult in God, even in the calm consciousness of its irretrievable loss; and that before the sun of a day specially consecrated to grief had attained its meridian, the mourner came cheerfully forth from her place of retirement, while a chant, as of angelic voices, breathed through the temple of her sorrowful soul, even over its broken altar.
"Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man that trusteth in Him."
"Oh, fear the Lord, ye his saints; for there is no want to them that fear Him."
The group of banished little ones was recalled, but while the messenger was gone for them, the mother in the strength of her new-found peace, had brought forth from that closed chamber the gifts which the fond father had designed for each of his children, and had spread them out in fair array on the parlor table. So it was New Year's Day to the children after all.
The trust of that mother in the widow's God was never put to shame. Her children grew up around her, and hardly realized that they had not father and mother both in the one parent who was all in all to them. She was efficient and successful in all her undertakings. Her home, with its overshadowing trees, its rural abundance and hearty hospitalities, lives in the hearts of many as their brightest embodiment of an ideal, a cheerful, Christian home. The memory of that mother, dispensing little kindnesses to everybody within her reach, is a heritage to her children worth thousands of gold and silver. Truly, "they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing."
FILIAL REVERENCE OF THE TURKS.
A beautiful feature in the character of the Turks is, their reverence and respect for the author of their being. Their friends' advice and reprimands are unheeded; their words are leash—nothing; but their mother is an oracle. She is consulted, confided in, listened to with respect and deference, honored to her latest hour, and remembered with affection and regret beyond the grave.
"My wife dies, and I replace her; my children perish, and others may be born to me; but who shall restore to me the mother who has passed away, and who is no more?"