By:
Edited By Heymen Wreford
By the Editor
Pasteur Lecoat of Tremel
HE died on Sunday, March 1St, at five o’clock in the afternoon.
He was sitting by the side of the bed, supported by his nephew, Monsieur Le Quere, waiting for some soup that his niece was preparing for him at his request. His wife was seated in a chair close to the bed. She had made some remark to him which he did not hear distinctly, and he said, “What did you say, my dear?” Then, in a moment, his head went back, and he passed away to be with Christ. No death agony or struggle, but just one catch of the passing breath and he was gone. He had complained of feeling very strange all the day; it was the wings of, the soul fluttering against the bars of mortality struggling to be free. With terrible sorrow desolating their hearts they laid him back upon the bed—the strong, brave heart was still. The one who had done more for Brittany than any living man was at rest from his labors. The active brain that had been unceasing in its activities for the cause of Christ was inert gray matter now. The hand that had written out his translation of the Bible into Breton—a work that has led to the conversion of hundreds—was useless now. Brain and heart and hand were no longer the servants of the soul—the dominant personality was gone.
He could see from his window the village road, and throughout the morning of his last day on earth he had watched the people coming to the morning service in the chapel—he spoke of their coming—the chapel where for fifty years he had faithfully proclaimed the gospel.
What a solemn thing death is! At the moment of dissolution every tie that binds us to the earth loosed. Our place vacant on earth forever. The work we can no longer do to be done by others. All the accustomed scenes through which we have moved, and which bore the stamp of our personality the same, but we are gone. We pass into eternity, and leave behind us a night of sorrow, dark with woe to those who watch us go—a night with a rain of tears in it, and all the sorrows that follow in the train of death. Ah! to be ready for the home-call. Had Pasteur not been ready there had been no time for prayer, or petition, for mercy for him. My reader, you may die tonight—are you ready? ARE YOU READY?
When I saw him for the last time last November he was very ill. Many an hour we spent together talking of the Saviour, and in prayer to Him. I loved to listen to the story of the years he had spent for Christ. The terrible persecution he had had to endure—the stern, hard fight that had been his, to bring the light of God into the Breton land he loved, dark with superstition and idolatry. What a fight it was! Every door was closed against him then; now, through his dauntless courage and faith in Christ every door is open; his colporteurs can preach the gospel where they will, and were the means forthcoming the whole of Brittany might hear the gospel. The fields are white to the harvest. Ah! that God would send His laborers into these waiting fields.
The Orphanage has sheltered and fed and clothed hundreds of boys and girls, who have come from the vilest surroundings, and have found in Madame Lecoat and her devoted helpers the pity and the love of Christ.