A Dedication

I take God the Father to be my God.

I Thess. 1: 9.

I take God the Son to be my Saviour.

Acts 5: 31.

I take God the Holy Ghost to be my Sanctifier.

I Pethr I: 2.

I take the Word of God to be my rule.

2 Tim. 3: 16, 17.

I take the people of God to be my people.

Ruth i: 16, 17.

I likewise dedicate my whole self to the Lord.

Rom. 14: 7,

And I do

this

deliberately.

Josh.

24: IS

Sincerely.

Cor

I: la.

Freely.

PSA.

no:

And for ever.

Rom. 8: 35, 39 the unspeakable bliss of being with Jesus. And this was the last talk I ever had with my boy!

He rapidly grew worse, became delirious, and was so very sick that it seemed unkind to rouse him, even to answer a question. On the fifth day of his illness, his father was sitting beside him, and, in a lucid moment, he turned and said, ‘’Father, is this the end?” “I think not,” was his father’s reply; ‘’but if it should be, it will all be well.” “Oh, yes,” he exclaimed, “I know that, but then I would have liked to have done some work for Him .^” In a moment he was wandering again, and these were his last intelligent words.

On the afternoon of the 8th he had a struggle which lasted for a short time, and then he gradually but surely failed. The cold chill of death slowly crept up his limbs, his breath grew shorter and shorter, and at half-past five o’clock, on the afternoon of the 8th of August, 1872, Frank’s earthly life was over, and his glorious heavenly life with Jesus had begun.

Our son had left us. But the sweet memories of his life, and the precious savor of his dedicated spirit were with us still; and every relic we found among his papers and his private treasures, only revealed to us afresh how deep and true had been his Christian experience. The next day after his death we took from the pocket of his every-day coat, which we found hanging in his room, his little daily note-book, and there we met with a sweet surprise; for we found his last precious confession, in the form of the consecration on the opposite page, which reveals in its completeness the secret of his pure and happy life.

Another precious consolation awaited us when we opened the Bible which had been Frank’s constant companion ever since his fourteenth birthday, in 1868. We found it full of pencil-marks made around his favorite verses, — revealing, in this way, much of his inner life, and his appreciation of the truth of God. Especially we rejoiced to see that those verses which declare the love and goodness of God, and develop the simplicity of a life of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, were the most deeply marked; and that the last chapters in Revelation, where the glories and the joys of Heaven are revealed, had also been peculiarly precious to him, while as yet he had had no thought of so soon entering into the possession of them.

“Some gentle souls there are who yield unto my love, And ripening fast beneath my care, I early can remove.”

Such was our boy. All that many an older Christian has learned only through years of painful discipline and sore trials, his fresh young heart apprehended by a childlike faith, while yet his life was free from care or sorrow, and filled with all its early brightness.

The Gospel had come to him as, in very truth, “glad tidings of great joy;” he had believed it, and it had made him happy. And it was no half-gospel he believed, nor was it a partial Saviour in whom he trusted, but Jesus was to him a full, a perfect, and a present Saviour from the power, as well as from the guilt of sin; and his life bore daily and hourly witness to the reality of his trust, and to the mighty power and perfect trustworthiness of his Saviour..

It was Frank’s singular privilege to learn in the beginning of his Christian life the Way of Faith. Not only was the truth that we are justified by faith, and made the children of God by faith, understood by him, but he also apprehended the far deeper truth, that the believer is called to live by faith, to stand by faith, to walk by faith, and to overcome by faith; and it is no wonder, that, possessing this secret, his soul early ripened for Heaven, and the Lord could call him home.

On his eighteenth birthday, the 1 2th of August, 1872, he was committed to the earth in Laurel Hill Cemetery, in the sure hope of a joyous resurrection. 18* O

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