HE stood amid the crowd while the message of salvation was being delivered. What his thoughts were who knows? It was not the first time that the gospel had been preached at the end of that bridge, and it was not the first time that he of whom we write had heard the story of redeeming love at that spot. Would it be the last? who knows?
The following morning there was a stir in the village; women gathered in groups around the doorways of their houses, and talked with seriousness of what had happened. They looked distressed. Evidently something very painful had taken place in the little world of that village. Yes, indeed, there had. But what was it? Our friend, who had formed one of the crowd at the bridge end on the previous night, had met with a severe accident, and had been brought home bruised and mangled from his work. Sorrowful yet loving hearts had helped him to his home, to lay him upon his bed to die. What happened in the chambers of his soul during the eight days that he lay upon his bed, we know not. The Lord searches the heart and ponders the ways of men.
It had so happened that a holiday trip had been arranged, in which our friend was to have been one of the party, and indeed he it was who had hired the conveyance for it. But when the day fixed for the trip came, the very money which he had paid for the carriage was employed in the hire of a hearse to carry his corpse to the grave.
Life is uncertain. We may be called hence at a moment’s notice. Reader, are you ready? E. C.