LINES RECEIVED BY A LADY, UNCOMMONLY SKILFUL ON THE HARP AND THE PIANO, FROM A CHRISTIAN. WHO WAS HIMSELF A MUSICIAN.
“PERMIT a stranger to express the delight with which, in the stillness of the evening, he has paused to listen to those notes which have been so sweetly, so plaintively, or so wildly obedient to the skill of your fingers and the emotions of your soul. Pardon me if I express some of the reflections awakened in my own mind.
“ ‘Alas!’ thought I, ‘those fingers which produce such thrilling emotions will soon be motionless in death. Those keys will no more tremble at their touch. Those notes will be hushed to silence, and the steps of the stranger be no more arrested, except by a plaintive dirge from some friend of her who sleeps in death. What then will be her state? Is her heart now prepared to sing that song that none but the redeemed can sing? Are her sins forgiven? Is Christ, the bleeding Lamb, her chief beloved?’ This, to me, is all unknown. That you may be one of the performers in that grand chorus which ascribes ‘Blessing, and honor, and power to him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever,’ is the earnest prayer of an affectionate friend, who will probably be personally unknown to you until the judgment of the great day.”
“Lord, I believe Thou hast prepared―
Unworthy though I be―
For me a blood-bought free reward,
A ‘harp of God’ for me.
‘Tis strung and tuned for endless years,
And formed by power divine,
To sound in God the Father’s ears
None other name than Thine.”
C. K.
WHEN a well-known man dies, the question is often heard― “What did he die worth?” One thing is certain, it is not what he left behind, for that he is parted from. No! what he sent before him, is what he died worth. If he knew, and lived for Christ, he has somewhat to his credit before God; if not all is loss, and he lost too.
W. T. P. W.