Thoughts In Sickness

"My mouth is filled with your praise, declaring your
splendor all day long." Psalms 71:8

Thoughts In Sickness

by Lord John Manners

I know not how it is, but man ne'er sees
The glory of this world, its streams, and trees,
Its thousand forms of beauty that delight
The soul, the sense, and captivate the sight
So long as laughing health vouchsafes to stay,
And charm the traveler on his joyous way.
No! man can ne'er appreciate this earth,
Which he has lived and joyed in from his birth,
Till pain or sickness from his sight removes
All that in health he valued not, yet loves.
Then, then it is he learns to feel the ties
Of earth and all its sweetest sympathies;
Then he begins to know how fair, how sweet,
Were all those flowers that bloomed beneath his
feet:
Then he confesses that before in vain,
The wild flowers flourished in the lonely plain: 
Then he remembers that the lark would sing,
Making the heavens with her music ring,
And he ungrateful never cared to hear
Those tuneful orisons at daybreak clear;
While all the glories that enrich this earth,
Crowd on the brain, and magnify its worth
Till truant fancy quits the couch of pain,
To rove in health's gay fields and woods again!
But when some pang his wandering sense recalls,
And chains the sufferer to his prison walls,
What to his anguish adds a sharper sting,
And plumes the feathers on affliction's wing?
W r hat but the thought that in his hour of health,
He slighted these, for glory, power, or wealth.
And, oh ! how trivial when compared to these,
Seem all those pleasures which are said to please!
At morn, when through the open lattice float
The hymns of praise from many a warbler's throat,
The sick man turns with pained and feverish start,
And groans in abject bitterness of heart.
Whence, say, ye vain ones, whence that soul-drawn
groan ?
Came it from anguish, or from pain alone?
Think ye, reflection was not busy there,
Borne on the sunbeam wafted by the air,
That speaks upbraiding, though its balmy voice
Whispers bright hopes, and bids his soul rejoice!
So feel I now, and should gay health once more
Glow in my frame, as it has glowed of yore,
Oh ! may I prove my thankfulness, and show
I feel the glory of all things below! 

Death The Gate of Life

        Oh! death!-dark hour to hopeless unbelief! hour to which, in that creed of despair, no hour shall succeed! being's last hour! to whose appalling darkness, even the shadows of an avenging retribution were brightness and relief-death! what art thou to the Christian's assurance? Great hour of answer to life's prayer-great hour that shall break asunder the bond of life's mystery-hour of release from life's burden‚-hour of reunion with the loved and lost-what mighty hopes, hasten to their fulfillment in thee! What longings, what aspirations-breathed in the still night, beneath the silent stars-what dread emotions of curiosity-what deep meditations of joy-what hallowed imaginings of never experienced purity and bliss-what possibilities shadowing forth unspeakable realities to the soul, all verge their consummation in thee! Oh! death! the Christian's death! what art thou but the gate of life, the portal of heaven, the threshold of eternity! Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D.

Instrumental "Hymn Of Heaven" 
from Worship Portal Plus

The Dead Are The Living

        I have seen one die - the delight of his friends, the pride of his kindred, the hope of his country: but he died! How beautiful was that offering upon the altar of death! The fire of genius kindled in his eye; the generous affections of youth mantled in his cheek; his foot was upon the threshold of life; his studies, bis preparations for honored and useful fife, were completed; his breast was filled with a thousand glowing, and noble, and never yet expressed aspirations; but he died! He died; while another, of a nature dull, coarse and unrefined, of habits low, base, and brutish, of a promise that had nothing in it but shame and misery - such an one, I say was suffered to encumber the earth. Could this be, if there were no other sphere for the gifted, the aspiring, and the approved, to act in? Can we believe that the energy just trained for action, the embryo thought just bursting into expression, the deep and earnest passion of a noble nature, just swelling into the expansion of every beautiful virtue, should never manifest its power, should never speak, should never unfold itself? Can we believe that all this should die; while meanness, corruption, sensuality, and every deformed and dishonored power should five? No, ye goodly and glorious ones ! ye godlike in youthful virtue! - ye die not in vain: ye teach, ye assure us, that ye are gone to some world of nobler life and action.

       I have seen one die; she was beautiful; and beautiful were the ministries of life that were given her to fulfill. Angelic loveliness enrobed her; and a grace as if it were caught from heaven, breathed in every tone, hallowed every affection, shone in every action - invested, as a halo, her whole existence, and made it a light and blessing, a charm and a vision of gladness, to all around her: but she died! Friendship, and love, parental fondness, and infant weakness, stretched out their hand to save her; but they could not save her: and she died! What! did all that loveliness die? Is there no land of the blessed and the lovely ones, for such to live in? Forbid it, reason, religion! - bereaved affection, and undying love! forbid the thought! It cannot be that such die in God's counsel, who live even in frail human memory, forever! Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D.

Death Is Life

        Then familiarize your mind with the inevitable event of death. Think of it, as life! Gloomy though the portal seems, death is the gate of life to a good and pious man. Think of it therefore, not as death, but as glory - going to heaven and to your father. Regard it in the same light as the good man who said when I expressed my sorrow to see him sinking into the grave, "I am going home." If you think of it as death, then let it be as the death of sin; the death of pain; the death of fear; the death of care; the death of Death. Regard its pangs and struggles as the battle that goes before victory; its troubles as the swell of the sea on heaven's happy shore; and yon gloomy passage as the cypress-shaded avenue that shall conduct your steps to heaven. It is life through Christ, and life in Christ; life most blissful, and life evermore, How much happier and holier we should be if we could look on death in that light. I have heard people say, that we should think each morning that we may be dead before night; and each night that we may be dead before morning! True: yet how much better to think every morning, I may be in heaven before night; and every night that the head is laid on the pillow, and the eyes are closed for sleep, to think, next time I open them it may be to look on Jesus, and the land where there is no night, nor morning; nor sunset, nor cloud; nor grave nor grief; nor sin, nor death, nor sorrow; nor toil, nor trouble; where "they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them." Rev. Dr. Guthrie.

Heaven Is Full of Children

Grandson and grandmother read
together.

        Think it, at least, highly probable, that where our Lord says, 'Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not for of such is the kingdom of heaven,' He does not only intimate the necessity of our becoming like little children in simplicity, as a qualification, without which (as he expressly declares in other places) we cannot enter into his kingdom, but informs us of a fact, that the number of infants, who are effectually redeemed unto God by His blood, so greatly exceeds the aggregate of adult believers, that, comparatively speaking, His kingdom may be said to consist of little children. As if the full import of what He had said to his disciples was, think not that little children are beneath my notice; think not that I am a stranger to little children; suffer them to come to me, and forbid them not. I have often been in their society; I love their society; the world from which I came, and to which I go, is full of little children.

"Flowers that once had loved to linger

In the world of human love,

Touch'd by death's decaying finger

For better life. above!

O! ye stars! ye rays of glory!

Gem-lights in the glittering dome!

Could ye not relate a story

Of the spirits gather'd home?"