THE DEAD | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 6, 1878

THE DEAD.

How little do we think of the dead. Their bones lie entombed in all our towns, villages, and neighborhoods. The lands they cultivated, the houses they built, the works of their hands, are always before our eyes. We travel the same road, walk the same path, sit at the same fireside, sleep in the same rooms, ride in the same carriages, and dine at the same table, and seldom remember that those who once occupied these places are now gone—alas, forever! Strange that the living so soon forget the dead, when the world is full of the mementoes of their lives. Strange that the fleeting cares of life should so soon rush in and fill the breast to the exclusion of those so dear. To-day man stands and weeps over the grave of his departed friend. To-morrow he passes that grave with cold indifference. To-day his heart is wrung with all the bitterness of anguish for the loss of one he so much loved; to-morrow the image of that friend is effaced from his heart and almost forgotten. What a commentary upon man.—Selected.