IS your mind at ease?” asked the doctor, bending over his patient, who for the last nine days had lain upon a bed of sickness, and was now about to leave this scene.
“No, it is not,” was the sad and somewhat unexpected reply.
Alas! poor Oliver Goldsmith—for he it was— “had lost his knack of hoping,” as he used to call the unthinking joyousness of his nature. His debts, and the memory of his reckless life, cast heavy shadows on his dying-bed; and who can tell what anguish filled his soul, as he drew near death’s silent river, without a hope beyond the grave?
Reader, on what do your hopes for eternity rest? Are you ready to meet God?
Remember, the matter must be faced, either in time under God’s grace, or in eternity under God’s judgment. Sooner or later you will surely stand before Him. Death will overtake you. “Is your mind at ease” when you face these solemn facts?
Beware, lest “sudden destruction” come upon you; lest death coming, while you are yet in your sins, you awake, too late, to find yourself beyond the reach of mercy, “without God,” without hope, and that forever.
ML 10/14/1906