THE

LAMBS ALL SAFE;

OR,

THE SALVATION OF CHILDREN.

BY THE

REV. ALEXANDER BALLOCH GROSART,

KINROSS,

AUTHOR OF THE PRINCE OF LIGHT AND THE PRINCE

OF DARKNESS IN CONFLICT,' ETC., ETC.

'As on a sunny bank, a tender lamb

Lurks in safe shelter from the winds of March,
Screened by its parent, so that little mound
Lies guarded by its neighbour; the sinall heap
Speaks for itself; an infant there doth rest;
The sheltering hillock is the mother's grave.'
Wordsworth.

EDINBURGH: W. OLIPHANT AND CO.

MDCCCLXIV.

MURRAY AND GIBE, PRINTERS, EDINBUrgh.

BABY'S SHOES.

O those little, those little blue shoes!
Those shoes that no little feet use!

O the price were high that those shoes would buy, Those little blue unused shoes!

For they hold the small shape of feet,

That no more their mother's eyes meet,

That by God's good will, years since grew still,

And ceased from their totter so sweet!

And O, since that baby slept,

So hushed! how the mother has kept,

With a tearful pleasure, that little dear treasure, And o'er them thought and wept!

For they mind her for evermore

Of a patter along the floor,

And blue eyes she sees look up from her knees, With the look that in life they wore.

As they lie before her there,

There babbles from chair to chair,

A little sweet face, that's a gleam in the place,

With its little gold curls of hair.

Then O wonder not that her heart

From all else would rather part,

Than those tiny blue shoes, that no little feet use, And whose sight makes such fond tears start.

WILLIAM C. BENNET.*

* Poems. Collected Edition. 1 vol. 12mo (Routledge, 1862). Pp. 6, 7.

PREFATORY NOTE.

HAVING been again and again consulted— all too mournfully often-in common with my ministerial brethren, by Jacobs and Rachelsweeping for their children,' I have been used by The Master to comfort some bruised hearts; and what I had done privately, being willing and wishful to do more publicly, I published three short Papers on the subject in the United Presbyterian Magazine for February, March, and April current. These Papers having received no common welcome, and brought me very many sadly-pleasing letters, I have responded to an earnest wish, and revised and somewhat enlarged them. Hence the present little book, which takes them for its ground-work. The subject deepened temptingly before me in the revision of my hurried Papers; but my design being still not to say over again what has been already sufficiently well said, much less to supersede larger treatises such as are enumerated