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p290 [From the French.] * * * I sympathise with you, dear brother, in regard to your dear mother. Doubtless, until all is desert, and that heaven, Christ, is all, these bereavements break the ties, and make us feel that it is the desert. But it is well, because it is the truth, and because our souls need it. We must be severed [from it]. The first Adam belonged to what? belonged to the earthly paradise. All that is lost. The ties of the life down here remain, those even that God has formed, and that He finds in their place, but death has come in, and the Holy Spirit is a power that detaches us from everything, and binds us to that which is invisible, to Christ in heaven and to the love of the Father. Sometimes this is done at the beginning in a violent way, sometimes little by little; but God works in His own, for He has prepared for them a city, has already given them part in a heavenly citizenship. And He is good; He raises us up for heaven and to heaven. . . . No doubt we have our troubles; I know it well, but we have an ever faithful Lord, faithful and full of love to bless us. We can count on Him; then the rest will be more blessed, more full of the knowledge of His own joys, for He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: and if we have by grace ever so small a share with Him in His sorrows, we shall have it in His joy for ever above. The cross now, and we know very little of it - Himself, dear brother, and the joy and the glory with Him, that is our prospect.

London, [1860].

[51166F]

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