Answer

But examine the grounds of your fear. May it not proceed from the strength of your affection for the eternal welfare of your friend, or from Satan's subtlety in designing to overwhelm and swallow you up in sorrow, as much as from just and solid grounds? In two cases it is very probable your fear may proceed only from your own affection or Satan's temptation.

First, if your relation died young, before doing anything to destroy your hope.

Second, if grown and in some good degree hopeful — only they did not in life or at death manifest and give evidence of grace with the clearness you desired.

As to the case of infants in general, it is not our concern to judge their condition. And as for those who sprang from covenanted parents, it becomes us to exercise charity toward them; the Scripture speaks very favorably of them.

And as for the more mature, who have escaped the corruptions of the world and made a matter of conscience of sin and duty — even if they never manifested what you could have desired — yet in them, as in young Abijah, may be found some good thing toward the Lord which you never noticed. Reverence of your authority, modesty and bashfulness, reserve of disposition, and many other things may hide those small and weak beginnings of grace in children from a parent's observation. God might have seen in them what you never saw. He does not despise the day of small things.

However it may be, it is now beyond your watch. Your concern now is rather to improve the affliction for your own good than to judge and determine their condition — which belongs not to you, but to God.