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cially addressed to them, by one who knows, he trusts, by experience, the value of the considerations he submits to others; by one who has been called in time past to weep, and is now trembling and weeping again, be blessed by the God of all consolation, for their comfort.

The following work is written with great simplicity, in sentiment and style: for it would be a mockery of woe to approach it with far fetched subjects; recondite discussion; cold logic; or artificial rhetoric. The bruised heart loves the gentlest handling, and the troubled spirit is soothed with the simplest music. The soul has no inclination, at such times, and in such circumstances, for any thing but the "sincere milk of the word," leaving the strong meat for other and healthier seasons.

Edgbaston, March 9th, 1841.

J. A. J.

FIRST PART.

APPROPRIATE SUGGESTIONS TO WIDOWS.

CHAPTER I.

SYMPATHY.

A WIDOW! What a desolate name! If there be one amidst the crowd of mourners that tread the vale of tears, who above all others, claims our sympathy, and receives it, it is you who have laid down the endearing appellation of Wife, to take up that of Widow. It would be a mockery of your woe to say, "Woman, why weepest thou?" You may weep, you must, you ought. You are placed by Providence ir the region of sorrow, and tears befit your condition. Let them flow, and mine shall flow with them, for if it be ever our duty to weep with those that weep, it is when the Widow is before us. The death-bed scene is still fresh in your recollection; the parting look, the

last embrace are still present to your imagination. And oh! the sense of loss that presses like a dead weight upon your spirit, and converts this whole busy world around you, into one vast wilderness. You have my tenderest condolence. The closest tie which bound you to earth has been severed. It seems to you as if there were nothing left for you to do upon earth but to weep. The husband's much loved image, if it hang not upon the wall, silent and motionless, is drawn upon the heart, for the imagination to gaze upon, and to remind you of your desolation. He whose absence but for a week or a day created an uneasiness which nothing could relieve but his return, is gone not for a day, or a week, or a year, but forever. He is never to come back, to gladden the heart of his wife, and to bless his household.

It has been finely observed "that the loss of a friend, (and much more the loss of a husband,) upon whom the heart was fixed, to whom every wish and endearment tended, is a state of dreary desolation, on which the mind looks abroad impatient of itself, and finds nothing but emptiness and horror. The blameless life, the artless tenderness, the pious simplicity, the modest resignation, the patient sickness, and the quiet death, are remembered only to add value to the loss, to aggravate regret for what cannot be amended, to deepen sorrow for what cannot be recalled. Other evils, fortitude may repel, or hope may mitigate, but irreparable privation leaves

thing to exercise resolution, or flatter expectation.

The dead cannot return, and nothing is left us here but languishment and grief."*

But it is not merely the loss of such a friend you have to mourn, but probably the means of your comfortable sustenance. Your husband was your provider, and the supporter of your babes. When he died all your prospects faded. The sun of your pros perity set upon his grave. Even when an ample fortune is left, it is a poor substitute for that friend whose decease covered the earth with sackcloth, and spread a pall over every terrestrial scene; but what an aggravation of woe, what a dreariness is added to desolation, when the spectres of poverty and want, or even the dark portents of care and privation, rise from a husband's grave. Perhaps even his labor, and skill, and patient perseverance, were but just sufficient to support the family; and what is the widow, unused, perhaps, to business, and untrained to hardship, to do alone? "It is," says Mr. Bruce, "the climax of human sorrow, when the wife of youth is left to mourn the loss of an affectionate husband at the time when his well-formed schemes were advancing to maturity; so that, in addition to the care of providing for her rising offspring, some of whom never learned to lisp the name of father, she has to struggle with difficulties which his sagacity and perseverance might have overcome."

Nor is it only the want of support, afflicted woman,

Dr. Thomson's Consolations for Mourners, p. 119.

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