God’s Little Lamb

God’s Little Lamb

Motherhood brings joys and sorrows.

ELIZABETH PRENTISS, author of the hymn “More Love to Thee,” was the wife of a pastor. While they were serving a church in New York City, she gave birth to her first son, Eddy, on October 22, 1848. Frail from the beginning of his life, he was nonetheless a joy to Elizabeth. Her journal tells of three-year-old Eddy’s Christmas:

He enjoyed Christmas as much as I had reason to expect he would, in his state of health, and was busy among his new playthings all day. He had taken a fancy within a few weeks to kneel at family prayers with me at my chair, and would throw one little arm round my neck, while with the other hand he so prettily and seriously covered his eyes. As their heads [Eddy and his sister Annie] touched my face as they knelt, I observed that Eddy’s felt hot when compared with A’s; just enough so to increase my uneasiness. On entering in the nursery on New Year’s morning, I was struck with his appearance as he lay in bed; his face being spotted all over. On asking Margaret [his nurse] about it, she said he had been crying, and that this occasioned the spots. This did not seem probable to me, for I had never seen anything of this kind on his face before. How little I knew that these were the last tears my darling would ever shed.

A few days later Elizabeth called for a doctor, as Eddy’s symptoms only worsened with each passing day. All the doctor could suggest was a warm bath. Elizabeth tenderly cared for him as best she could.

I knelt by the side of the cradle, rocking it very gently, and he asked me to tell him a story. I asked what about, and he said, “A little boy,” on which I said something like this: Mamma knows a dear little boy who is very sick. His head ached and he felt sick all over. God said, “I must let that little lamb come into my fold; then his little head will never ache again, and he will be a very happy little lamb.” I used the words little lamb because he was so fond of them. Often he would run to his nurse with his face full of animation and say, “Margaret! Mamma says I am her little lamb!” While I was telling the story his eyes were fixed intelligently on my face. I then said, “Would you like to know the name of the boy?” With eagerness he said, “Yes, yes, mamma!” Taking his dear little hand in mine, and kissing it, I said, “It was Eddy.”

On Friday, January 16, 1852, little Eddy died, his loving spirit ascending to that place where the Lord Jesus, thousands of other children, and a myriad of angels joyfully welcomed him. That day Elizabeth wrote the following poem:

To My Dying Eddy, January 16th:

Blest child! dear child! For thee is Jesus calling:

And of our household thee—and only thee!

Oh, hasten hence! to His embraces hasten!

Sweet shall thy rest and safe thy shelter be.

Reflection

As believers, how do we know that children who die in infancy are in heaven? The Bible indicates that they are in the story of the death of David and Bathsheba’s little son. David fasted and prayed for the sick child until he died. Then he got up and went to the temple to worship, confident that one day he would be reunited with the child in heaven.

David replied, “I fasted and wept while the child was alive, for I said, ‘Perhaps the Lord will be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me.”

2 Samuel 12:22-23