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BAFtTY IN
THE CRAVE,
tDISC.
Xt.
Reflection
III.
This
one thought,
that
the
"
grave
is
God's hiding-place,"
should, compose
our
spirits
to
si.
lence, and abate
our
mourning
for
the
loss
of
friends,
who
have
given sufficient evidence
that
'they
are
the children
of
God. Their
heavenly
Father
has seized them
from
the
midst
of
their
trials,
dangers
and
difficulties,
and
given
them a secure refuge
in
his own
appointed
place
of
rest
and
safety.
Jesus
has
opened the
door
of
the grave
with
his
golden
key,
and bath
let
them
into a
chamber
of
re-
pose
:
Ile
has
concealed
them in a
silent retreat,
where
temptation
and
sin
cannot
reach
them,
and
where
anguish
and
misery never
come.
When
I
have
lost therefore a dear and
delightful relative
or
friend,
or perhaps
many
of
them in a
short
season are
called
successively down
to
the
dust,
let
me say thus
within
myself,
"
It
is
their God and
my
God
has done
it
:
He
saw
what
new
temptations
were
ready to
surround
them
in
the circumstances
of
life
wherein
they stood
:
He
beheld the trials
'
and
difficulties
that
were
ready
to
encompass them on
all sides,
and his
love ruade
a
way
for their
escape
:
He opened
the
dark retreat
of death,
and
hid them there from
a
thousand perils
which might
have
plunged them into guilt and defilement.
He
be-
held
this as the
proper
season to
give
them
a
release
from
a
world
of
labour and
toil, vanity
and vexation,
sin
and
sorrow
:
They are taken
away from the evil to
come,
and
I
will
learn to complain
no more.
The
blessed Jesus,
to
whom they
had devoted
themselves, well
knew
what
allurements
of
gaiety
and
joy
might have been
too pre-
valent
over them,
and
he gave
them
a
kind escape
lest
their
souls should suffer any
real detriment,
lest
their
strict
profession
of
piety should
be soiled
or
disho-
noured
:
He
knew
how
much
they were able
to bear,
and
he would lay
upon
them no
further burden
:
He
saw
rising
difficulties
approaching, and
new
perils
coming
upon
them beyond their strength, and he
fulfils his own
promises,
and
glorifies his
own
faithfulness,
by
open-
ing the
door of
his well
known hiding- place, and
giving
them a
safe
refuge there.
He
keeps them there
in
secret
from the
corruptions of a
public
life,
and
the multiplied
dangers
of
a
degenerate
age,
which might have
divided
'their hearts
from
God and things heavenly
:
And perhaps
be guards them also
in
that dark retreat
from
some long