We knew Him as we could not know
Through heaven's golden years:
We there shall see His glorious face,
But Mary saw His tears.
The touch that heals the broken heart
Is never felt above.
His angels know His blessedness,
HIS WAY-WORN SAINTS HIS LOVE.
Bevan.
“I HAVE DONE MY WORK FOR CHRIST. I WANT TO GO. OTHERS WILL BE STRENGTHENED TO DO THEIR WORK, BUT MINE IS DONE.”
I WAS sitting by Mr. Kelly's bedside on Friday, March 23rd, four days before he passed away, when he said these words to me. He lay there calmly waiting for the summons. After nearly eighty-five years of life, and more than sixty years spent for Christ, he felt his work was done. How bravely he had battled against the weakening by disease of that wonderful vitality that had made his life so real and strenuous! He never laid aside the "weapons of his warfare" until his Lord took them from his weary hands and bade him rest. He was indeed a warrior of the Cross. He does not need my poor words of eulogy, for all this was most distasteful to him; but he is gone, where earthly love and praise can never reach him, to "be with Christ which is far better.”
It is impossible for us to form a true estimate of what his life was. We wonder when we think of the untiring energy of his Christian service; of the marvelous insight God had given him, by His Spirit, into His Word; of the volumes he has left behind him of such value to the Church of Christ; of the multitude of his public utterances; of his voluminous correspondence; of his spiritual help in his private intercourse; of his untiring zeal, shown year after year in visiting the assemblies of God's people and seeking their welfare in every way.
When we think of these things we can estimate a little what we have lost by his departure. He will be more valued now he is gone than ever he was before. No longer will that eloquent tongue be heard. No longer shall "that man of God" move among us. We shall sorrow now that we did not value him more; that we did not oftener attend his ministry; that we sometimes misunderstood his faith and zeal, and measured him by our poor human standards, and so failed to understand the Divine purpose in his life.
How often he was tried by the grievous inconsistencies of Christians; by the littleness of those who could not rise above the level of their own circumstances, and who so often blamed him because he would not leave his high estate to traffic with their low conceptions of a Christian's place and standing in this world. He has suffered deeply at the hands of those whom he always sought to serve; and while, thank God, many loved him as the honored servant of his Lord, he had to bear the bitter reproach of those who could not bend him to their alien ways. More than thirty years ago he wrote these words in his "Introductory Lectures to Paul's Epistles," P. 241.-
“Oh, it is a blessed thing that in the midst of the sorrows of this world, the Holy Spirit knows how thus to blend the name of Christ, as the sweetest balm, with the sorrow, however bitter, and to make the very memory of the grief pleasant because of Christ, who deigns to let Himself into it all. It was this that so cheered the Apostle's heart in his loneliness often, in his desertion sometimes, when the sight of a brother would have given fresh courage to his heart. Looking to the Lord, as it is the life-breath of love, so it adds to the value of brotherly kindness in its season. Thus we know how on approaching Rome, Paul was lifted up and comforted, as he saw those who came to greet him. But there he was soon to experience the faltering of brethren; there he was to see not one standing by him in the hour of his shame and need. He must be conformed to his Master in all things; and this was one of them. But out of the midst of bitter experience he had learned Christ, as even he had never known Him before. He had proved long the power and the joy of Christ for every day, and for every circumstance of it.”
Thank God our beloved brother was comforted, as Paul was. The desertion of brethren could not alienate him from Christ; nor the coldness of human hearts make Christ less precious to his soul.
We know that those who serve their Lord the best are those who are the oftener exposed to the assaults of the adversary. He ever seeks to lay low those who are in the foremost ranks of service, and the greater the servant, the greater the victory of the powers of darkness, if that servant can be discredited in any way.
Once more I ask you to listen to his words: "There is no more common device of Satan than to seek the destruction of the power of testimony by the allowance of evil insinuations against him who renders it.”
“I HAVE DONE MY WORK FOR CHRIST, I WANT TO GO.”
Yes, his work for Christ is done as far as the living witness is concerned. His tried heart, torn and rent by many a trial, will never throb now but with the blessedness of heaven. All through his long life of active service he was cheered by the consciousness of the presence of his risen Lord. How could he have labored so abundantly, and borne the sorrows and afflictions of his earthly pathway, had not his spirit been sustained by a heavenly presence, and strengthened by the eternal Word?
Had earthly ambition claimed his life, what might he not have become? With his matchless powers and his great erudition he might have risen to any rank of life. It is not for me to speak of the honors of his University career, others know more of that than I do. But all his powers, and all his life, were consecrated to the service of the Lord. He was content to be lowly to serve the lowliest, and to forego all earthly honors, so that he might be the acceptable servant of the Lord Jesus.
The world cannot understand such sacrifices as these. It cannot understand a man willing to be nothing so that Christ may be all. Nor can it estimate the value of a life that is lived apart from the world, and devotes all its talents and all its strength to advancing a Kingdom that is not of this world, and in seeking the honor and glory of One whom the world has cast out and crucified.
With the failure of his bodily powers he was longing to go. "I WANT TO GO." The tired hands are lifted up to heaven and to God. The eyes, growing dim to earthly sights and sounds, have a clearer vision now for that which is beyond. "I WANT TO GO." The desert sands are trodden, and from his Pisgah heights he beholds the Promised Land.
With the weariness of earth and time weighing heavily upon him, he seeks "the rest that remains to the people of God.”
When, in the glory and the rest
We joyfully adore,
Remembering the desert-way,
We yet shall praise Him more.
Remembering how, amidst our toil,
Our conflict and our sin;
He brought the water for our thirst,
It cost His blood to win.
And now in perfect peace we go
Along the way He trod;
Still learning from all need below
Depths of the heart of God.
Bevan.