Sad indeed is the Christless home, when a beloved one lies dead within its doors.

No words of Christian comfort have any power to console, because there is no faith to receive them.
No stars shine through their cypress-trees.

But how different it is in the Christian home, in like sorrow! The grief is just as sore, but the truth of immortality sheds holy light on the darkness, and there is a deep joy which transfigures the sorrow.
Then may we not even put sorrow down as one of the secrets of happiness in a true Christian home?
This may seem at first thought a strange suggestion.

But there surely are homes that have passed through experiences of affliction that have a deeper, richer, fuller joy now than they had before the grief came.

The sorrow sobered their gladness, making it less hilarious, but no less sweet.