Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/146

146THE HALLIG.

ways remain to us a book sealed with seven seals, if the
experience of our lives did not come to our assistance,
and open to us the revelations of God in their fullness,
as words of truth and salvation. We live ourselves into
the sacred writings, and in this way, they become for us
light and life. The mere reading of the Bible leaves us
in much darkness, even where we fancy that we see
clearly. So then, if with all thy past experiences, and
with what still remains before thee, thou wilt knock at
this sacred portal, it shall be opened to thee. A rich
treasury of comfort shall lie before thee, and thou shalt
be filled with resignation to the will of thy Father in
Heaven — a resignation which is sad, and yet joyful,
which trembles, and yet overcomes, which feels pain-
fully the loss of what has been taken away, and yet
rests peacefully in God who hath taken it."
  Maria's mother died as she had lived, calmly and
devoutly. She received the Lord's Supper, not as the
solace of a troubled conscience reserved for a dying
bed, but as the last seal of a faith in which she had re-
mained steadfast even unto the end. Her age made
her incapable of understanding the depth of the wound
from which her daughter was bleeding. Standing on
the border of the grave, her thoughts were turned away
from earthly things ; and the vanity of our temporal
wishes and hopes appearing more clearly to her now that
she was so near to her eternal home, it was impossible
for her to enter into the feelings of a youthful heart,
which does not so easily surrender its claims to this
world's happiness. She feared therefore nothing for her
daughter, and the less because she saw in her religious
character a certain assurance that comfort from above