All this prosperity was alloyed only by such domestic sorrow as might be fitly termed gentle chastening.

The death of his next brother, Thomas, who had acted as his curate, was a severe loss to him; and in the desire to make every affliction a stepping-stone in Christian progress, he began, from that date, a custom of composing a short collect-like prayer, veiled in Latin, on every marked occurrence in his life.

The next occasion was, after several years of marriage, the birth of a little daughter, whom (in his own words) "he had the pleasure of seeing and caressing for six months," ere she faded away, and died just before the Christmas of 1817.

He never could speak of her without tears, and (his wife tells us) ever after added to his private prayers a petition to be worthy to rejoin his "sinless child." His grief and his faith further found voice in the hymn, each verse of which begins with "Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee," and which finishes-- "Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee, Whose God was thy ransom, thy Guardian and Guide.
He gave thee, He took thee, and He will restore thee, And death has no sting, for the Saviour has died." Such had been the training of Reginald Heber, through the pleasant paths of successful scholarship and literature, and of well-beneficed country pastorship; a life perilous to spirituality and earnestness, but which he kept full of the salt of piety, charity and unwearied activity as parish priest, and as one of the voices of the Church.

Such had been his life up to 1822, when, on the tidings of the death of Dr.Middleton, Bishop of Calcutta, his friend Charles Williams Wynn, President of the Board of Commissioners for the affairs of India, offered him the appointment.
To a man of his present position, talents, and prospects at home, the preferment was not advantageous: the income, with the heavy attendant expenses, would very little increase his means; the promotion threw him out of the chances of the like at home; and the labour and toil of the half-constituted and enormous diocese, the needful struggles with English irreligion and native heathenism, and the perils of climate, offered a trying exchange for all that had made life delightful at Hodnet Rectory.
A second little daughter too, whom he could not of course look to educating in India, rendered the decision more trying.