BOOTH, who shot Mr. Lincoln, the President of the United States, fled into Caroline County, where, at a place called Bowling Green, he was hunted down by a party of cavalry, and brought to bay in a barn.
The place being surrounded by the soldiers, he was called upon to surrender; but on his refusing to do so, the barn was set on fire, and Booth was seen, rifle in hand, prepared to resist to death.
A soldier fired, and he fell mortally wounded.
Shortly before he breathed his last, he, said to those around him, “Tell mother I died for my country. I THOUGHT I did for the best.”
Then, as the fever of political excitement died away before the dread calm of death, and the last great act of a. misspent life rose before him in its true aspect, the poor young man saw that he had destroyed a valued life, together with his own, to no purpose, or any good result whatever. Murder committed; life-long sorrow entailed on the victim's survivors; his own mother's heartbroken; hope, reputation life itself, all sacrificed; and all for what?
As the terrible conviction flashed across his mind, although still impenitent towards God, he threw up his hands, and cried with his last breath, “Useless; useless!” then sank red-handed into eternity!
Dear reader, these two little words speak volumes. They form a dying man's comment, even from his own point of view, on a life full of opportunity and consequent responsibility, but whose aims and associations, restricted to "the world and the things in the world," ended at last in the sacrifice of body, soul, and spirit, and all for worse than NOTHING!
How forcibly these dying words, coming from the burning barn in the Far West, remind us of the Lord's solemn warning to all who make this world and its short-lived advantages their sole object and aim: " What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? '' (Mark 8:3636For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36).)
What indeed! "Useless"? Ay, how unspeakably worse than "useless," even were there no judgment after death-, no lake of fire by-and-by. Does not that remorseful cry tell how the soul pronounces judgment on itself, when the world is slipping from the grasp of the dying hand, and the heart's shattered idol turns to utter bitterness? For the heart had its idol once; and now, broken, cast out, and "useless; useless"! What must fill its place? Undying, intolerable remorse!
"Useless; useless!" the deliberate verdict of a dying man's own unaided reason on a wasted life; a verdict never to be reversed throughout eternity!
I say, then, that even were there no judgment after death, no, lake of fire, “What shall it profit a man 'if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
But the Word of God declares a scene yet future which may well make the sinner tremble:” saw the dead, small and great, stand before God.''
Brought face to face with Him who was not in all their thoughts, whose grace they had contemned, whose precious Son they had utterly scorned, while admitting, as a matter of historical fact, that He died for them!
Reader, your "works." may not be so bad as his whose tragic end I have narrated, but even you would not like to see ALL your "works" of hand and foot, thought, heart, and tongue, written legibly on fair white paper, and posted up in public, with your own signature attached. And if you would and do shrink from the judgment of man, how will you bear the judgment of God?
Yet to that it must come, unless you take refuge in Him who has borne that judgment already for all who can truthfully say, “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” (1 Pet. 1:2424For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: (1 Peter 1:24).)
Can you say it by faith in Him? I do not ask whether you have been taught it as a matter of "Christian education"; but do you believe it, because GOD says it? If not, be persuaded, before it is too late. “As though God did beseech by us, we pray in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.” (2 Con 5:20.) "I am the door," said the Lord Jesus Christ;" by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved."(John 10:99I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. (John 10:9).) Flee to that refuge from an accusing conscience, from eternal remorse, from" the wrath to come." (Matt. 3:77But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? (Matthew 3:7); 1 Thess. 1:1010And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. (1 Thessalonians 1:10).)
Think of poor Booth dying a deserved death of violence; his last thought of a mother he could never hope to see again; his last word the deliberate judgment of his own conscience on a life worse than wasted; worse, it may be, morally, than your own, vet in worldliness of character the same. "Useless; useless"! J. L. K.