ripe for heaven. Her eyesight is almost gone, but the splendors of the
celestial city kindle up her vision. The gray light of heaven's morn
has struck through the gray locks which are folded back over the
wrinkled temples. She stoops very much now under the burden of care
she used to carry for her children. She sits at home, too old to find
her way to the house of God; but while she sits there, all the past
comes back, and the children that forty years ago tripped around her
armchair with their griefs and joys and sorrows--those children are
gone now. Some caught up into a better realm, where they shall never
die, and others out in the broad world, testing the excellency of a
Christian mother's discipline. Her last days are full of peace; and
calmer and sweeter will her spirit become, until the gates of life
shall lift and let in the worn-out pilgrim into eternal springtide and
youth, where the limbs never ache, and the eyes never grow dim, and
the staff of the exhausted and decrepit pilgrim shall become the palm
of the immortal athlete!