2-302 (Raw)

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We must remember that our life is as but the vapour and the morning cloud that soon passeth away, that we are but the beings of an hour compared with the years of time much less with those of eternity. this afflictive dispensation of an all wise Providence has, my dear Richard, I feel, been a great trial to you, a severe calamity and heavy stroke indeed. I look upon your loss by this visitation of Providence as in some measure irreparable, and one I fear you will, in a greater or less degree (according to circumstances), continue to feel for perhaps many years yet to come [...] 
I feel persuaded that your trial and affliction is one of no ordinary kind indeed, and must, as it were, have borne you down almost to the very earth, and been felt by you with an intensity and keenness to which language fails to give expression, and known only to those who have experienced the like bitter pangs of grief for departed worth and that of one so nearly allied but from which, if the sincere wishes and fervent prayers of an affectionate but far distant brother could relieve you, or be of any service, they are before a Throne of Grace, and I trust will occasionally continue to be offered up for you and your now double dear to you, motherless little ones. As for myself I am on your account much consoled in consequence of the pious resigned and truly christian manner and spirit in which you have borne and written to me of this distressing event, and in which pious and christian spirit of resignation to the will of Almighty God I humbly hope and fervently pray His sustaining grace will keep you, and though you will continue to feel in all the relations of life, more particularly those of domestic happiness, the great loss you have sustained, yet your consolation will be the certain knowledge (as I am firmly persuaded it is) that your loss is her great and eternal gain and that you can look forward with cheering hope, and even a bright countenance, amidst all the turmoil, the storms and troubles of this transitory life, to a joyful meeting of redeemed spirits in that happy place where parting will be no more, where the wicket cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. [40] I trust you are now, by God's dealings with you, and the afflictions you have experienced, often led for consolation to the contemplation of these things, and the happy termination of all the afflictions and troubles of this life, when time as to us here shall cease, through the saving grace and merits of our adorable Redeemer and though that by this heavy stroke and visitation of Providence the beloved and affectionate wife of your bosom, the pious and tender mother of your dear children has been severed from you and them, yet I trust and rejoice to think that you are by grace and with pious resignation to the divine will enabled to say with good old Eli it is the Lord: let him do what seemeth him good and with Job the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. 
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