WE gathered with sorrowful hearts around the grave of a beloved brother, one November day, in the Grange Cemetery, Edinburgh, for we thought of the Christian wife and the three fatherless girls left in this cold heartless world, filled with sin, sorrow, death, and pain.
For them we were sad, but for our brother, we could only say “He is taken away from the evil to come; he enters into peace, he rests, walking in his uprightness. He is ‘absent from the body, present with the Lord.’ He is in the best place (paradise), with the best person (Jesus); he still lives with Him (Jesus).”
A comrade, in the confession of Christ’s name and grace, spoke a few simple, truthful, tender words of Gospel testimony to the unsaved around the grave.
Another Christian asked us to sing the last hymn our departed brother had sung with us at the Lord’s Table, ―
“O Jesus, Lamb of God,
Who, us to save from loss,
Didst taste the bitter cup of death
Upon the cross.”
A short prayer for the widow and her bairns followed, that God would bless and comfort them, and that we all might be warned, saint and sinner, by the sudden death of him whose remains we had just interred. We left the body to the care of Christ, and slowly dispersed to our respective homes.
Amongst those that stood in the dispersing company, I noticed a gentleman whose past history had been blighted by drink, bringing disaster both for soul and circumstances. I inquired how he fared. He replied to my question, and added, “I could not believe my eyes when I saw the notice of C.’s death. What was the matter with him?”
“Influenza,” was my reply.
“Oh,” said he, “he was a good man. I wished I had listened to him when he warned me. He came into my shop when I was on the road to ruin, and took his little Bible out of his pocket, and urged me to stop in my downward career. I laughed him to scorn, and it ended in vain. I would have been a different man today, if I had only listened to him. Yes, C. was a good man.”
I answered kindly, “If you are ruined for this world, you can get your soul saved, it is not yet too late.”
“Yes, I know that,” he said; “it is all right with my soul now, and I have not tasted drink for five months; it is all right with my soul.”
A few more words, and we parted. I fervently hope it is all right with his soul.
What a fine testimony was this over the grave of a Christian, as to faithfulness and love for the souls of men. In view of that dread day, when the sinner, whether he be a drunkard or a sober man, shall stand before God, ―may we be found warning men, and, more than that, seeking to win poor guilty sinners to the precious Saviour, who died to atone for sins, and rose to be a living, loving Saviour for the worst of Adam’s race.
“Oh, what can equal joy divine?
And what can sweeter be,
Than knowing that this Christ is mine
To all eternity?
Safe in the Lord, without a doubt,
By virtue of the blood;
For nothing can destroy the life,
That’s hid with Christ in God.”