It was during the spring of that year, amidst the joy of the liberated city, that some sad tidings reached William Farel. Master Faber was dead! It was not wonderful, for he was nearly ninety years old—some say nearly a hundred—but it was none the less a bitter sorrow to the disciple who had loved him with a love so rare and so devoted. So Farel tells us; and he tells us also the tale that he had heard of Master Faber’s last days. No doubt he had heard it from Gerard Roussel.
“Our revered master,” Farel relates, “was for several days so dismayed at the thought of the judgment of God, that he ceased not to say, ‘It is all over with me! I have earned for myself eternal death, because I did not dare to confess the truth before men!’ Night and day he ceased not thus to mourn and to lament. Gerard Roussel, who never left him, exhorted him in vain to take courage, and to put all his trust in Christ. Faber answered, 'We are condemned by the just judgment of God, because we have kept back the truth, to which we ought to have borne witness before men.’ It was a grievous sight to see this pious old man delivered up to such bitter sorrow, and to such awful terror of the judgment of God. But at last the Lord set him free from his fears, and he fell peacefully asleep upon the bosom of Christ.”
You who have read the Pilgrim’s Progress, will remember that pleasant meadow, “the other side of the fence,” into which Christian and Hopeful turned, because the King’s highway was rough to their feet. And you remember how they had to mourn over their evil choice, in the dungeons of Giant Despair. Such a dungeon had the Castle of Nèrac become to Master Faber in his last days.
Soon after the Queen of Navarre told the whole story. You will like to hear it.
“Master Faber had once said ‘O how dreary for us must the absence of Christ ever be, if we have the mind of the Spirit. And how must we long for His presence, which we can have in no other way than by leaving this earth. O death, how sweet art thou for the faithful and the spiritual heart! Thou art the entrance into life.’
“But one thought tormented him in his last days; it was that he had shrunk from the labors, and the sufferings, and the death, which he ought to have welcomed for the truth’s sake. Young James Pavannes had gone bravely to the fire, whilst he had fled. And when Berquin had stood fearlessly at the stake, again he had fled for safety. It was true he had never taken part against the truth he owned—he had never belied his faith—but ought he not, as the others had done, to have offered up his life, and sealed the truth by his death? This thought lay heavy on his heart, and the heavier was the burden of it, the nearer he drew to the moment when God would call him hence; for, he said, he had no martyr’s crown, whilst his friends would stand in theirs before the throne of God.
“One day, the Queen of Navarre invited him to dine with her, in company with other learned men, whose discourse was pleasant to her. But Faber sat at the table in great sorrow, and he began at last to weep, and when the queen asked him the reason of his sorrow, he said, ‘How can I be cheerful, my queen, when I am the greatest criminal upon the face of the earth?’
“Then the queen asked him, in wonder, what great crime he could ever have committed, for he had been a man of holy conversation from his youth up.
“'Truly,’ he said, ‘I can think of none other than one only, which lies as a heavy burden on my conscience.’
“And the queen besought him that he would speak more clearly; and at last he said, with many tears, ‘How can I stand before the judgment seat of God, I, who have taught the holy gospel of His Son purely and simply to many others, who, by following my teaching, have had to suffer a thousand tortures, and have gone bravely to their death? And I, their cowardly teacher, fled away; as though I, an old man, as I am, had not lived enough, and more than enough; and I had no need to fear death, but rather to desire it. Yet I fled secretly from the places where the martyrs’ crowns were to be won; and I have been shamefully unfaithful to the calling of my God.’
“Then the queen talked with him, and sought to calm him by reasonings and examples, and said there would be many good and holy men before the throne of God, who had done the same as he, and that we should never doubt the goodness of the Lord. And those who were present sought only to comfort him.
“And at last the old man took courage, and said, ‘Then nothing remains for me but to go hence to God, when it shall please Him to call me, as soon as my last will is made. And I feel that I must not delay to make it, for He calls me now.’ Then he turned his eyes to the queen, and said further, ‘I name you as my heiress, and your preacher Master Gerard" (Gerard Roussel), 'shall have all my books. And all my clothes, and all my possessions besides, I give to the poor; and the rest I commend to God.’
“Then the queen smiled and said, ‘But what will be left for me then, James, seeing I am to be your heiress?’
“I leave to you,’ he said, the task of dividing all I have amongst the poor.’
“So be it,’ said she,' and I can well assure you, that inheritance is more welcome to me than if my brother, the King of France, had left me all his lands.’
“Then, with a brighter countenance, he said, ‘Now must I rest; be happy, and farewell.’ And he laid himself down upon a bed that was near at hand. And they thought he had gone to sleep; but he was sleeping in Jesus, not having had a sign of illness. And when they went to wake him, they saw that he was gone home to God.”
Margaret mourned for him sincerely, and saw him laid to rest in the church of Nérac. She herself knew too well what the sorrow was that had, clouded his last days. She lived on “weary,” we are told, “of everything.” For she had had but little of that which makes life sweeter than all beside, the reproach of Christ. Yet we cannot doubt that she was one of the Lord’s weak followers, and dear to the heart of Him who bore the cross, despising the shame, for many who have feared death and shame for His sake.
To one of these, Michel d’Arande, Farel wrote, telling him of Master Faber’s last days. Michel had known Master Faber, and had learned from his lips the gospel of God. He had believed, it moreover, and he had longed for the time when his “beloved France “should welcome it. He had preached it in the happy days at Meaux, in company with Farel. But he, too, had turned aside from shame, and reproach, and death, and he was now a Romish bishop, near Farel’s old home in Dauphiné.
Farel’s letter cut Michel to the heart. “It pierced me,” he wrote, “with the sword of the Spirit. You exhort me so solemnly, you reproach me so justly, and that in the name of Jesus Christ, that I have not a word to say in reply. I can only beseech you to help me with your prayers, and not to cease to warn me, that I may at last be dragged forth from the slough in which I am.”
But I cannot tell you whether Michel d’Arande ever came out of the slough, till he was taken from it into the Paradise of God.
We now say farewell to Master Faber. And as we leave him in his grave at Nérac, I will tell you some words of his, which he would have been glad for you to hear, and which you may be glad to hear also.
“Paul,” he said, “the vessel God had filled, was dead to the world, to himself, and to the creation. He lived no more his own life, but he lived by the Spirit of God. This he tells us, when the love of Jesus, which welled up in his heart, caused him to exclaim, ‘I live, yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.’ He was so full of Christ that all he thought was Christ, all he spake was Christ. Four hundred and forty-nine times, or more, has he named in his epistles the name of Christ. Wherever he went, he went to, and for, Christ. Whensoever he came, he came from, and for, Christ. All he did was by, and for, Christ. He desired not to lead us to the creature, but to the Creator, to the Son of God, who made and created us the sons of God, His Father, by offering Himself up for us—who died for us, that we might have life eternal—who washed us in His blood from the leprosy of Adam, our first father, making us pure and clean.... It is to Him that St. Paul leads us—not to created men or things. Let us then go to Christ in fullest trust. May He be our thought, our speech, our life, our salvation, and our all.”
With these blessed words we leave the old man, to sleep in Jesus till the day breaks, and the shadows flee away, and he shall rise from his forgotten grave to be forever with the Lord whom he loved. And let him be to you as the pillar which was set up by the wayside, where the pleasant path turned off through the smooth meadow, “the forbidden ground.”