March 10

"Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well."

—2 Kings 4:26.

A LITTLE child's death is a bitter and poignant blessing. This sword, like the Cid's sword, wounds that it may heal.

With the child himself it is well. He has been led through the strait gate of death into the Father's house. God had need of his "clear sweet treble" in the choir of His redeemed around the throne. And he has been removed at once from a world of sin and pain into the Presence where there is fulness of joy. It is as if Christ, seeing the risks to which the little ones are exposed, spoke again the old tender words, "Suffer them to come to Me! They will be better here, where no snares are laid for their stumbling, and where they can never lose the dew of their youth." And then He lays His priestly and kingly hands on them, and blesses them; and they rise up and follow Him.

With mothers and fathers, too, it is well. The affliction should be God's angel, to make them wiser and saintlier. Henceforward they should walk softly, with a humble and trustful heart, with a consecrated and unworldly spirit. The cross they take up meekly is changed into a weapon with which they go out to conquer. The crown of thorns is transmuted into a crown of gold. "To bury his name was indeed harder than to bury his body," Thomas Boston mourned when he laid his infant Ebenezer to sleep. But there is no burying such a name. A little child shall lead them—a little child in heaven, beckoning them, alluring them, inviting them to come up and dwell beside him in his joy.

Perhaps I need the comfort of these thoughts. Perhaps someone else does, to whom I can pass it on.