LITTLE fair-haired, blue-eyed Mary was rather more than five years of age. Her brother Benjamin had taken some little thing, for which offense his mother was chastising him. In the midst of her mother’s lecture to the boy, Mary attracted general attention by straightening her little figure against the wall, and calling out in her pretty, lively manner, “Mother, I pray to God to keep me from stealing and telling stories, and eating the sugar, and He does keep me. Don’t He, mother?”
The mother of these children often talked to her little ones about the good things of God, and of how much Jesus loves children. One day when her mother had been talking to Mary about Jesus, the dear child listened with more than usual attention, and clasping her little hands together, and looking earnestly up to heaven, exclaimed “And—I—love Jesus!”
She would on no account be dressed, or be put to bed without prayer. And if some busy morning anyone attempted to hurry her downstairs her devotions, little Mary would resent it with tears.
Everybody who knew Mary loved her. Nothing pleased the young men in her father’s employment better than to have little Mary standing demurely in the factory, as with folded hands she sang her favorite hymns, the following being that of which she was most fond—
“Jesus loves me! This I know,
For the Bible tells me so:
Little ones to Him belong;
They are weak, but He is strong.”
Mary liked very much to hear about heaven, and somehow or other she gained the notion that she must be dressed very clean, and wear her white frock when she went there. Often would she run to her mother, exclaiming— “Mother, I want my best frock on to go to heaven.”
At such times a sharp pain would dart through the heart of her fond mother, for the thought would arise, What if my darling should die? How could I part with her, even if such should be the Lord’s will? But the Lord says, “As thy days so shall thy strength be.” And this became the experience of Mary’s mother, as it will certainly be of every one who simply trusts in the Lord.
Mary was evidently ripening for glory. How is it that some of the most beautiful of the buds of earth are early taken to blossom in heaven? On her sixth birthday, dear little Mary was taken with the fever, and nine days after that, she was translated from the nipping frosts of earth to bloom forever in Paradise.
When the darling was dying, her mother noticed that the eyes of the child appeared fixed upon the ceiling, with an inquiring glance. “Are you looking at the angels, Mary?” asked her mother.
“Yes, mother,” said the child, pointing in one corner of the room; “they are up there.” And then Mary went to be with Jesus.
Mary was carried to the grave by the teachers of the Sunday school, and all the scholars walked together in front of the coffin. Why should we weep because this fair young flower, this beauteous bud, just opening to our sight, has been transplanted by Almighty power, to the fair world where all is peace and light?
“I used to think that if the Lord called me to part with that dear child, it would be the death of me,” said her mother to me; “but, instead of that, at her death, the Lord gave me more of His own presence, and He has made me peaceful in the thought of my darling being free from pain, and suffering, and disappointment, and with the Saviour who loves her so much more than I ever can.”
RHODA.