FRIENDS surrounded a dying couch; loving hearts and willing hands, anxious to anticipate every desire and minister to every need, were there. Only yesterday its occupant was in health and strength, to-day she is brought face to face with eternity—eternity.
Death with his hand has laid her low, and go she must. It were vain to plead that she did not invite, expect, or prepare for him. He is remorseless and relentless; the death dews gather upon the brow of his unhappy victim; a film spreads over her once clear eyes, and fixedly but mutely she gazes upward.
Alarmed, her friends send for a servant of God. The hour is late, but the message is urgent—a soul passing into eternity without God and without hope. Soon he enters the chamber of death, and gazes upon the troubled countenance of one whom but a few brief hours ago he had met in the streets, but who is now rapidly passing away from this scene forever. The word of God is read, scripture after scripture is quoted, telling of God's grace and love, but no sign nor sound indicates that death's victim hears the words of life; and silently and sadly her immortal spirit passes away into a region where nothing remains but judgment for those who, like her, had "neglected so great salvation."
Alone! no Saviour's hand to guide, no Saviour's heart to trust. What can be more sadly solemn than to leave a circle of loving earthly friends, and to pass into another circle without a single friend, a place where all are hateful and hate one another, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched?
Let us leave this scene, where a soul is passing, a lonely stranger, from a loved family circle into a friendless eternity. Follow me, my reader, to a convalescent home in connection with B—Hospital.
A poor sufferer had left the hospital, so far recovered that he could be safely transferred to the convalescent home, and at last he seemed so much better that the day was fixed for him to return home to his friends. Before leaving the home he asked, and obtained, permission to walk through the grounds once more. A keen, cutting wind was blowing, and as he came indoors, just before starting for his home, a violent attack laid him low, and in a few brief hours he, too, stood on the borderland of eternity—eternity.
One of the nurses supported him during the short death struggle, till at last he fell back into her arms motionless; another nurse ran forward, and in a touching tone exclaimed—
“Poor fellow! what a sad thing, dying here all alone, without a friend near him."
The apparently dead man opened his lips, and slowly and sweetly the words fell from them—
“Not alone; Jesus is with me I " and immediately his spirit passed away from a friendless scene into one where is the "Friend that sticketh closer than a brother."
Reader, are you living without Christ and without hope in the world? If so, remember that to live without Christ is, in most cases, to die without Him, and then an endless eternity in the lake of fire. I beseech you to consider your ways, your end, your prospects, and turn to Christ at once; there you will find that if left alone in this world, in the midst of sorrow, suffering—yea, death itself, you will find your home in the presence of one who will never leave you nor forsake you, and at all times you will be able to say, " I am not alone; Jesus is with me." H. N.