SOME years ago, the writer was returning home by rail from the village of S., in the county of D.
A beautiful day it had been, and it was then a glorious evening as I walked up to the elevated platform, which commanded a full view of the neighborhood and the road below.
Several persons who were on the platform before me were intently looking down on the roadside. Following their gaze with my own eyes I saw there a covered-up figure lying motionless in death.
Soon an omnibus drove up, and the lifeless form, which was that of a woman, was lifted up, and placed inside the omnibus. A young person (her daughter) took her seat outside in company with the driver, and her box was put up after her.
As the omnibus moved away the poor girl burst into a flood of tears. Less than an hour before she had left her home to go to a new situation as domestic servant, and her mother was helping her to carry her box to the station.
While they were hurrying along together the mother was taken ill, and in a few minutes died.
What a sorrowful change i instead of looking brightly forward to a new situation, to have to return home in such a manner with her dead parent. What changes there are in this world! “Man proposes, but God disposes.
But what of the mother who so quickly passed out of time into eternity? Was she ready for the sudden change? I trust she was.
How true it is that “in the midst of life we are in death” Death, the most unwelcome of visitors, will enter the home, and take whom he wills away. None can stay him.
My train came along shortly afterward, and I left the place; but the memory of that event has lingered in my mind, as doubtless it has in that of others who witnessed the sad occurrence. God speaks with no uncertain sound to men in this world, but too often they do not heed His warnings, and death overtakes them while they are still unprepared for the final journey out of time into eternity.
In the person and work of Christ ample provision has been made for the sinner. All he has now to do is to come to God by Christ, trusting in the Lord Jesus as his Substitute, sheltered by His blood from the final and unending judgment of a righteous God, which will be executed on an ungodly world, a world of sinners, and rejecters of His proffered salvation. Take, my dear friend, His proffered mercy Today, and find peace for your soul in the perfect, finished work of Christ.
B. L. N.