[1] Can we turn aside and see what light this peace of God can
diffuse through the chamber of disease; how it can
tranquilise the bosom of the poor widow surrounded with her
helpless babes; what serenity it can shed around the
tottering steps of some aged saint; and how it can
irradiate the gloom even of the grave itself, and not feel
that it is rightly called "perfect?" True, it might often
be more folly possessed on earth, and it will be more fully
possessed in heaven. But if we remember what it has
actually done in ten thousand instances, when the dearest
friends have died, and property has taken wings and flown
away, and one pall of sadness has seemed to overspread the
entire world, we shall feel that it is impossible to give
it too high a name or attach to it too high a
value.--_Magie._
[2] In the darkest period of the American civil war, as Mr.
George William Curtis was taking leave of President
Lincoln, the President placed his hand on his shoulder, and
said with deep feeling: "Don't fear, my son; we shall beat
them."
[3] Sir William Napier describes, in his "History of the
Peninsular War," that at the battle of Busaco in Portugal
how affecting it was to see a beautiful Portuguese orphan
girl coming down the mountain, driving an ass loaded with
all her property through the midst of the armies. She
passed over the field of battle with a childish simplicity,
scarcely understanding which were French and which were
English, and no one on either side was so hard-hearted as
to touch her. Sir William Napier once in his walks met with
a little girl of five years old, sobbing over a pitcher she
had broken. She, in her innocence, asked him to mend it. He
told her that he could not mend it, but that he would meet
her trouble by giving her sixpence to buy a new one, if she
would meet him there at the same hour the next evening, as
he had no money in his purse that day. When he returned
home he found that there was an invitation waiting for him,
which he particularly wished to accept. But he could not
then have met the little girl at the time stated, and he
gave up the invitation, saying, "I could not disappoint
her; she trusted in me so implicitly." That was the true
Christian English gentleman and soldier.--_Dean Stanley._