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IV. BEREAVEMENT.

"And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave: that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day."-GEN XXXV. 19, 20.

BEREAVEMENT.

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HE first tombstone recorded in the world's history! The last memorial

pillar of Jacob's life. It stood al

most in sight of Bethel. There was but a brief passage from the hush of retrospection to the deeper hush of death-only a few miles between the deserted monument of communion and anticipation, and the gravestone which marked Rachel's grave "unto this day." But there lay beween them an interval in the history of life, little represented by the short stage of travel; that between joy and bereavement-that between the hour of expectant hope and the hour of departing, and the stillness of the grave.

"Give me children, or I die!" had been long before the passionate exclamation of the childless wife. The petition had been granted, but "Rachel

died and was buried." A little bark was rudely launched forth on the life-voyage at the same time that, on another and darker voyage, a frail and tender spirit drifted forth out of his sight who gazed helplessly after it, into the wide ocean of Eternity.

The love of Rachel had been the love of Jacob's life her death was emphatically the bereavement of his life. The brief notices wherewith that love is storied are not few or passing, when we consider how cursory and unimpassioned are the memoirs of Holy Writ up to that period. It would rather seem as if, in recording that first meeting by the well of Haran when "Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept," and those seven years of service "which seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her," and the care which in the hour of danger placed "the mother" with Joseph last in his train, the inspired writer had lingered upon the softer passages in a rugged and changeful life, and willingly preserved from the effacement of time a tender picture of those other days which were over then when, among the tents hastily pitched on the hill of Ramah, the angels of

life and death walked hand-in-hand, entering in together.

We learn nothing concerning the funeral rites or the time of mourning which attended the encampment at Ephrath. The narrative is one of few words; but it is more than an entry in the family register of deaths. The monument, beneath which was deposited all that remained of the daughter of Haran, was not more lasting than that secret memorial enshrined in his heart who raised therewith the last pillar of his homeward march. Hers had not, indeed, been a faultless character. The portraitures of the Bible are true to life; and in the divine light the frailties and infirmities of each character must stand out in their real proportions. But the vail of love had ever been before his eyes who mourned for Rachel; and now another vail, even the gentle oblivion which we throw over the errors of our departed, was cast upon her memory; and throughout all ages, tender recollections of the mother's life which no love could preserve have intertwined protectingly around the gravestone of Ephrath.

We know not whether in that hour of sore

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