DEATH has again broken our circle. Sister Eveline Swasey, the eldest sister of my dear wife, died of consumption in Barton, Vt., on the third inst., in the 30th year of her age, just four weeks from the day of my wife's death.
The rest of these loving sisters now sleeping side by side will be short in the cold grave; for they died in bright hope of a part in the first resurrection.
In sorrow and sadness we toil on while they rest; but sweet relief mingles with our grief; we shall hear them cough no more, no more shall we see them suffer. Soon will they awake, but not with bleeding, mangled and wasted lungs, as they fell asleep, but all blooming with life and immortality.
Sister Eveline embraced the Sabbath more than ten years since. For more than a year she has often regretted that her religious life had been marked with so little zeal, steadfastness and faithfulness, and at times feared that her hope in death might be faint and unsatisfactory. But her last hours were marked with the clearest manifestations of God's sustaining grace.
Duty compelled me to leave home just before her death. But my last visit at her bedside has left an additional evidence to my mind in favor of the value of the Christian religion upon a dying bed, which I can never forget. Though her sufferings were great, said she, "I have suffered none too much, it is all just right." A discourse was preached from the words, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." Num. xxiii, 10.
A. S. HUTCHINS.
Middle Grove, N. Y.
DIED at his parents' residence six miles north of Knoxville on Thursday evening June 14, Samuel Abraham, only son of Samuel and Margaret M. Zin, aged three years, two months and twelve days. Almost without a moment's warning, these parents were called to part with their little boy. He was out playing in door-yard in good health, when he was stung by a honey bee near the end of the middle finger, and in less than ten minutes he lay silent and still in the cold embrace of death. Bro. Zin had only a few hours before left home to go to mill at Knoxville, and the sad news met him while there of the death of his child. It seemed almost to cause the vital current in him to cease to flow, but the parents wait in hope; and while tears flowed, they could be heard to say, "We will try and live faithful here, and meet our dear boy in that goodly land of rest where death shall be no more." The writer preached a short discourse from John xi, 25: "And Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life."