The terms Early Deaths' and 'Early Graves' are relative ones; and, as will be seen in the sequel, the writer has by no means confined himself to their more literal and restricted meaning. While throughout, and particularly in the former portion of the book, Infancy, Childhood, and Early Youth claim and receive the chiefest and tenderest consideration;-it has been deemed well to pass, by a natural gradation, to the case of those of more advanced age, yet on whom the appellation may be bestowed with equally touching truth and reality. Indeed, Early Death' has often its most touching illustration in regard to those who have been arrested in the fulfilment of some great Life Mission, for the good of man and for the glory of God; and such, as will be seen from the Table of Contents, occupy the latter pages. cords the more salient features in the life and early departure of a devoted Missionary called away in the prime of early manhood; while the last of these Immortelles is reverently laid on the grave of the heroic Captain Gill, who, in the writer's cherished remembrance, will be ever young; and who perished, too early for his country, so tragically in the Sinai Desert.

*

One of these Memorials briefly re

** I have gratefully to acknowledge the courtesy of the Dean of Lichfield in connection with the beau

tiful Frontispiece to this volume;-an autotype taken from the celebrated monument of Chantrey which adorns his Cathedral:-truly a Poem-rather, a touching Elegy in "breathing marble."

PAGE

V. THE CLAIM OF THE DIVINE PARENT AND THE GRANDER

VII. NO MORE EARLY GRAVES-THE ETERNAL FOLDING

XI. DIVINE TEARS OVER AN EARLY GRAVE, AND THE SLEEP

II. A MISSIONARY-REV. CHARLES ALBERT JANSON

III. A SOLDIER-CAPTAIN W. J. GILL, R.E.

284

320

362

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

HAVE often purposed, as I have been often asked, to publish such a book as this. The

purpose and the request, long entertained, I resolved recently to carry out, upon one of those occasions in which the words of the title possessed a sad and exceptional significance. It was in connection. with a bereft household in which the writer, as former pastor and friend, had a sacred interest, and where the touching monotone claimed a still more mournful appropriateness than in the case of the stricken Patriarch who first uttered it :-"Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin also!" (Gen. xlii. 36).

"Through dark and death, through fire and frost,
With empty arms and treasure lost,

66

I knock and cry, Undone! Undone !
Is there no help, no comfort-none?
No gleaning in the wide wheat-plains
Where others drive their loaded wains?"1

Oh, eyes that for my children's sake,

Have poured forth tears like summer rain!
Oh, breaking heart, that will not break,
Yet never can be whole again!"

1 E. Barrett Browning.

A