A Death-Bed Preacher
Theee are many ways of preaching Christ’s gospel without choosing a text, or standing in a pnlpit. This glorious work is not restricted to any time, or place, or class of individuals. A “Wilberforce could proclaim the gospel of love on the platform of Exeter Hall, or the floor of Parliament-House, though he never wore a surplice, and never had a prelate’s ordaining hand upon his honored head. Thomas Cranfield preached co the boisterous rabble of Wapping, till, in their delight, they were ready to reward him with “three cheers” for his thrilHng exhortation. Hannah More preadied Christ in the dramng-room; and Ehzabeth Fry in the prison-cell. Harlan Page scattering tracts through a city work-shop, Nettleton whispering his solemn words to weeping souls in an Inqniry-meeting, the Dairyman’s Daughter murmurmg the name of Jesus with her faint dying voice, and the Shepherd of Sahsbury -plain, leaning on his crook to talk about eternity to a passer-by, were all intensely earnest ’ preachers of righteousness.’ The church has had few more faithful preachers than Thomas Halyburton, and his most impressive discourses were delivered on a dying bed. “This is the best pulpit,” said he, “that ever I was in; I am laid on this bed for this very end, that I may commend my Lord.”
The careful and erudite sermons that were prepared for the pulpit of Ceres and
St. Andrews are now well nigh forgotten; but the savory discourses that fell from his lips during that last month of his holy life, will live, we trust, till the last saint shall go down to the dark river. Let him who would learn how the sting of death may be plucked away, and how (to use Halyburton’s own phrase) ’ a frail mortal may shake hands with the king of terrors,’ let him read the closing chapters of that Memoir which the Free Church of Scotland has reproduced for the edification of her children. What a spirit must that man have possessed who could have recorded the death of a favorite son in such words as these!
‘’March 23, 1712. The Lord’s day, a day to be remembered by me. Oh! my soul never forgot what this day I reached. My soul had smiles that almost wasted nature. My kind colleague and I prayed alternately; Oh such a sweet day I About half an hour after the Sabbath, my child, after a sharp conflict, slept pleasantly in Jesus, to whom pleasantly he was so often given.”
To his wife, who stood weeping by his bedside, he once said, “My sweet bird, are you there? I am no more thine. I am the Lord’s. On the day I took you by the hand, I wist not how I could ever get my heart off you again; but now I have got it done. Do not weep; you should rather rejoice. Rejoice with me, and let us exalt His name together. We shall be in the same family in heaven; but you must even stay a while behind, and take care of God’s bairns.” At another time he remarked to her, after a night of agonizing pain — “Jesus came to me in the third watch of the night, walking upon the waters; and He said to me, ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, I have the keys of hell and of death,’” and then he added, “He stilled the tempest in m3rsonl, and lo! there was a sweet calm 1”
When the Eighty Fourth ?salm had been sung for him, he said, “I always had a mistnned voice, but, which was worst of all, a mistimed heart; but shortly when I join the temple service above, there shall not be, world without end, one string of my affections out of tune.” To his aged elder he remarked — “James, ye are an old man, and I am dying; yet the child is going to die an hundred years old. I am like a shock of corn fully ripe. I have ripened fast under the bright Sun of righteousness, and I have had brave showers!”
We have read of many sublime displays of courage in the dying hour, but never met with such a calm confronting of the king of terrors as the following passage displays. “I am not acting as a fool,” said he to his physician, “but I have weighed eternity during the last night. I have looked on death as stripped of all things pleasant to nature; 1 have considered the spade and the grave and every circumstance in it that is terrible to nature! and under the view of all these, I found that in the way of God which gave me satisfaction — not merely a rational satisfaction, but a heart-engaging power that makes me rejoice J^
On the morning of the 28d of September, he went into the dark valley. Yet he did not go alone, nor did the calm sunshine withdraw from his pathway — for in the “even-time, it was light about him.” Just before he died, he said,” I am thinking on the pleasant spot of earth that I will get to lie in, beside Mr. Rutherford, and Principal Anderson. I will come in as the little one among them, and I will get my little George in my hand, and Oh! im luill he a group of honnie dust P^ During the last six hours his voice failed him. But his angelic face was eloquent, and when he could not speak, he gently clapped his hands in triumph! So died the holy Halyburton — and on all the face of our earth the ministering angels of God beheld that day no other scene that was more like the heaven which they had left.