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Even before an individual finds his head hoary with
the frosts of seventy winters, be often realizes the
melancholy sensation of the poet who says “he feels
like one who treads alone some banquet hall
deserted.” One by one those whom he once knew and
valued, disappear from the stage of life, and the
little grass-covered hillock which marks their last
resting-place, is all that is left to tell that they
were once here and lived their brief span of years.
We, too, have often pondered deeply, when we
accompanied to their sepulchre the remains of
departed friends, and yearly have we seen with pain
the circle of those we valued growing narrower and
narrower, without our wishing even to supply their
places with new and more youthful substitutes. But
it is well that we are thus taught our own
mortality, and become gradually prepared to exchange
ourselves the temporal for the eternal, a brief stay
here for an abode in the world of spirits “where the
wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are
at rest.”
These feelings came over us with renewed vigour when
we lately witnessed the interment of Miss Rachel
Myers Cohen, who was summoned away from this life in
the night of Thursday, from the 8th to the 9th of
August, after many years of great suffering, which
she bore with calm resignation, so that even her
sickness was made beautiful by the calmness with
which she endured it. Deprived of sight by disease,
she could still picture to her mind the friends she
valued; and in every instance she displayed that
yielding to her Maker’s will, which true religion
alone can produce. She well exemplified the purity
of the life of a Hebrew who serves the God, the
Creator of heaven and earth; and when her end came
she sank into death, as an infant falls asleep on
its mother’s bosom, where it finds protection and
care during the hours of repose. May she indeed have
found the peace of the righteous before the Father
of spirits, according to whose command she departed
from this world. |
