Cheerful Thoughts About Going Home

There is one thing that we have all got to do one of these days, and that is to die. It is well, as rare old Jeremy Taylor phrased it, to go “knock at the gate of our grave” occasionally, and to listen whether any painful echo comes back from within. When I am visiting my beautiful plot in peerless “Greenwood” I often forecast the inevitable hour when my earthly vesture shall be laid down beside those of my beloved children in our family bed-room — “asleep in Jesus.” I look off to a neiohborincf hill and see the monument of Prof. Morse, and then towards another hillock which bears the tomb of the benevolent millionnaire, John

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C. Green, and then over at Oak Knoll, on which my old friend Horace Greely rests after his busy life, and then away to still another elevation on whose verdant slope slumbers the eloquent Dr. George W. Bethune, who wrote,

“It is not death to die — To leave this weary road,
And ‘mid the brotherhood on high
To be at home with God.”

This is the right way for a redeemed child of Christ to think and to speak about dying. A great many good people are plagued and tormented with a vague horror about their last hours; they have heard about the “pangs of death” and “death-bed agonies,” and really die a thousand deaths themselves by frightened anticipation. Now it may relieve some of these excellent folk to be reminded that in the vast majority of cases there is but little physical suffering in the last moments. To a genuine Christian few things in life are less painful than life’s close. If our souls are at peace we need not trouble ourselves about bodily sufferings — for commonly fatal disease has a certain benumbing effect upon the nerves, so that the dying suffer very little. Such has been my observation. “I had not thought,” said a certain good man, “that it could be so easy a thing to die.” As life ebbs away usually sensibility to pain goes with it. So gently did a certain eminent chemist breathe his last that a teaspoon of milk which he held in his hand was not even upset; the dead hand held it still.

Death is very often a slow fading out of the faculties, like the coming on of a tranquil twilight. The sense of hearing sometimes remains intensely acute, 90 that the dying overhear a whisper in the room.

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“She is sinking very fast,” was whispered by an attendant in the dying-chamber of a godly woman. “No, no,” was the quick response of her who had overheard the words; “no, I am not sinking; I am in the arms of my Saviour.” The sense of sight generally weakens in the process of dying. A medical friend of mine said to his wife, “Set that lamp up closer to me; the room seems to be growing dark.” Such were the sensations of Dr. Adam, the learned principal of the Edinburgh High School, who fancied himself to be in his schoolroom, and murmured gently, “Boys, it is getting dark; you may go home.”

Of deaths on the battlefield a large proportion must be without severe physical agony; for a gunshot wound is apt to benumb the sensibilities. When a bullet pierces either the heart or the brain there can be no pain; probably our glorious mar-

25 tyr Abraham Lincoln “never knew what hurt him.” Drowning is far from painful. Those who have been resuscitated tell us that their sensations where rather exhilarating. Somewhat similar are the feelings of those who have been benumbed with cold in the Arctic regions; they imagined themselves to be sinking into a sweet slumber. But the recovery, the thawing out, was an excruciating agony. It is about the same with backsliders in our churches: they find it very easy to drop off into spiritual torpor, but when God in mercy wakes them up, and brings them to by severe chastisements, the process of soul-conviction and contrition involves sharp sufferings. Blessed be the blow that awakens a freezing Christian!

I have witnessed a few jubilant and triumphant dying-beds, but ecstatic raptures are rare. Calm, sweet tranquillity is often-CHEERFUL THOUGHTS. igs

er the attitude of the child of God who is waitinof for the messencrer to bear him home. On the other hand, I have but seldom witnessed poignant distress on the part of those who had given no evidence of preparation to meet God. To all such, however quiet may be their exit, the terrible pang must come afterwards. The real “sting of death” is not bodily pain, or separation from loved ones, or momentary remorse; it is a wasted life, a rejected Saviour, and a lost soul! The full consciousness and the consequences of these are realized in the next world.

It is not wise nor well for a genuine, active and healthy Christian to be thinking too often about dying. To do every day a full, brave day’s work is the main thinof. Don’t let us look too far ahead; the blessed wages will be sure when sundown comes. Our loving Father keeps our times in his own hand; he knows when to dismiss us from the life-school and promote us to the higher grade in heaven. It is a luxury to live a full, hearty, vigorous life for Jesus, sowing and reaping, filling and being filled. As soon as God has something better for us to do, and something richer for us to enjoy, and something higher for us to reach, let us joyfully go up yonder after them.

“‘T is a blessing to live, but a greater to die; And the best of this world is its path to the sky.”