Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/103

 Rh trustful mind in the providence of her Maker. She endured with almost unexampled fortitude this afflicting dispensation of Almighty Power. No children to soothe, scarcely a relation to console, no one with whom she had ever been accustomed to assimilate, she thus stood with every outward mark of widowhood. Her heaviness was great and her trial excessive; but she was indeed a tower standing in a desert plain. She had in the cellars of her faith an army of courageous defenders, who, had she been ever so encamped against, should, must, and would have prevailed, through Him who is of the widow the protector and to the fatherless a friend. Always, like a true wife, leaning on her husband for advice and for all spiritual strength, her shaft broken and her prop dismembered, she had been forlorn, she had been withered, she had drooped, nay she had fallen, but for the guard of her faithful Saviour and her pitiful Redeemer. So let it tell against the day of fear, so let it tell against the hour of bereavement that your Saviour holds the salver for your tender tears. Hear this, oh wife, cherishing your sickly partner, dreading the hour of separation and division! Hear this, ye children, looking at your only parent sinking into dust! God is a husband to the widow and a father to those whose parents