The awful roar of artillery, mingled with the groans and shrieks of the wounded! “Surely hell itself could not be much more terrible!” muttered the young soldier to himself, as he lay listening wearily to it all. A few minutes before, the doctor had paused at his side, looking tenderly at the pitiful wreck of manhood, and some expression — he hardly knew what — in the strong face bending over him had made him ask the question, “Any hope, doctor?” He was quite prepared for the shake of the head and the whispered “I’m afraid not, poor laddie.” And then, with true British pluck, he had whispered, “Then don’t waste your time with me, doctor; there are hundreds of others needing your help. Please go.”
“God bless you, my brave lad,” the doctor had said, and, with one parting look of mingled pity and admiration, left him alone with his thoughts. They were not pleasant ones. This was the end of his life, and oh! what a failure it had been! If only he could blot out the dark, dark past as it rose up against him in condemnation! But it was too late now; he was facing death — and, after death, the judgment! Oh! the horror of it all! “God bless you!” the young doctor had said; but how could he expect God to bless him, the God whom he had slighted and rebelled against all his life?
But suddenly, as he lay there, a little, long-forgotten scene came up clearly before his eyes. He was standing at his mother’s knee, a little guilty child, caught in his first lie. He could see again the pained expression in her eyes, and hear the quiver in her voice as she said, “I’m so disappointed in my little boy,” And he could feel the overwhelming sense of disgrace and loneliness in his own little heart as he sobbed out, “I suppose you won’t kiss me good-night, then, mother.”
And, ah! he could feel again his mother’s loving arms around him, and her tender kisses lavished on him, as she said, “Ah! child, don’t you know that nothing ever alters mother’s love?”
As he lay there thinking of that little scene new hope was born in his breast. If a mother’s love was so great, what must God’s be like — God Who had given us our mother? What did the good old Book say? “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” In a moment he saw it all. “Why, God sent His only Son to die for me,” he murmured. “How He must love me; but oh! how I have neglected Him! I’m almost ashamed to go to Him now, but I can’t face death without Him.” With one last effort he clasped his hands together and Whispered faintly, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
He lay quite still after that, and when the morning sunbeams stole softly over the dear old earth, they gleamed on a face from which all the terror of death had vanished, bright with the light of God’s eternal peace.
LILIAN G. HEARD