John Seely Hart

“ Teach us, loved one, how to mourn!
I saw, too, the monument which has been recently erected over the grave of Dr. Abeel, the Chinese missionary. I knew and loved him well, and yet my feelings, when I stood beside his grave, had not a tinge of sadness! Indeed, why should they have? He had fought the good fight, he had finished his course, he had kept the faith, and I knew that he was in actual possession of his crown of glory! It was, then, a time and a place for joy and for triumph, and not for mourning and despondency. The Christian hero had gone to his reward, was that a cause for sadness? ”

“ Had he a father? Had he a mother? Had he brothers and sisters who were yet to learn the mournful tidings that the dear little fellow who had left them, recently perhaps, in all the healthful buoyancy of his young existence, had closed his eyes in a land of strangers, and was sleeping his last sleep so far away from his Southern home? Or, was he an orphan, whose young days had been shaded by sorrow? ”

“ Ah, mourning heart! didst thou but know that when we view the matter rightly, the dead are with us, more potently and beneficially than they were in life, thy sorrow would be turned into a pensive joy, creating within thee and around thee precious and purifying influences! ”