IT was only last spring that our gentle May left our home, and went away. The heavenly Gardener plucked our beautiful flower for His, paradise.
Sweet child! Short was her stay in this sin-blighted world, yet our hearts are drawn after her where she is with Jesus with unutterable longings.
May was always different from other children. The day she sickened, her mother, noticing the unearthly prattle of the darling, exclaimed to her own father, “Do you think I shall be able to keep my child? She appears to me just like an angel."
Little did the mother imagine that before another week the sunshine of the house would have departed, and the charming voice of her child would be silent in death.
On Sunday evenings it was the custom of May's mother to gather her children around her, and to show them the pictures of Scriptural subjects, and to talk with them about Jesus. It was on one of these occasions that little May exclaimed, earnestly, and with great feeling, “Mother, me does love Jesus."
The darling child could speak very plainly ' for her age, and her fond mother used to watch her as she went about singing with her childish voice, " Hallelujah! to my Savior! “and at other times " Hallelujah, praise the Lord!" and as she watched her that mother's heart would give a sudden throb.
When the Lord designs to take one of our treasures, however, it is in vain for human love or human will to oppose, even in intention, the will divine of our loving Father—
“It needs that we be weaned from earth;
It needs that we be driven,
By loss of every earthly joy,
To seek our all in heaven."
And so May's mother had to part with one of her most precious treasures, for the "Lord had need of her."
A day or two previous to her death, while the mother was attending to some duty in the child's bedroom, she heard one word repeated in a musical voice, and that word was “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”
Bending over her, the mother said," Was that you, darling, calling Jesus?"
“Yes," answered the child, and again in a faint voice came the one word, “Jesus."
Little May sleeps in Jesus. She was only two years and seven months old!
Yes, we thank the Savior whom little May loved that He is the Door leading into full redemption, and into the glory at last.
RHODA.