God of my Fathers

PAGANISM. 



The dead are not always forgotten by 
the pagan negroes : they resort annually 
to their graves, and offer food and liquor 
to their departed relatives. A negro mo- 
ther in Jamaica was known, for thirteen 
years, to make this annual visit to the 
grave of her daughter, and, in an agony 
of feeling, to offer her oblation. Thus 
" they sorrow without hope." We re- 
spect the strength of the affection ; we 
lament its downward, earthly tendency : 
all the thoughts of that poor mother were 
in the grave with her child, and the only 
object of that unabated love was the mere 
dust of a dissolved frame. Such is hea- 
thenism ! Melting and mournful thoughts 
steal over the recollections of the be- 
reaved Christian mother too, and time 
has no power to dry up the fountain of 
her tears ; years may pass away, but the 
memory of the forms over which she has 
hung with maternal fondness suffers no 
decay ; it keeps its place to the last hour 
of the most extended life. But, when 
she thinks of her children, she thinks of 
them as in heaven, not as in the grave  
and, urged onward by this hope through 
her remaining pilgrimage, she hastens to 
embrace them again in the kingdom of 
God.i2. Watson.