DEAR Charlie lay, day after day, gradually growing weaker, in a very poor little room, having but few comforts and scarcely anything to make it pretty. It was up several flights of stairs, in a house let out to different tenants, and the noise made by so many persons was often very trying to the suffering child.
I never saw Charlie during all those weeks of constant pain and weakness without his having a ready smile and a happy word to greet me. Can my little readers tell me what it was that made Charlie so happy, in the midst of everything to render him unhappy? Ah! I think some of you can, because you have found out for yourselves that there is One whose presence can make the darkest place bright, and give comfort and joy in the midst of pain and sorrow. But to those who wonder what could make such an afflicted little boy contented and often joyful, I would just whisper, "It was because JESUS was there, and Charlie knew and loved Him.”
If you had sat beside dear Charlie's little bed, he would have told you how he, a sinful boy, had come to the precious Saviour, and how Jesus had taken him, vile and wicked as he was, and had washed him in His precious blood, and made him so clean that he was fit to stand in the presence of God in glory. The Lord would tell the little boy by His Spirit of the plate to which He would soon bring him, where there is no pain, nor crying, nor any sorrow—a place which could never be filled till Charlie was there.
Now, do my readers wonder that Charlie could be bright and happy in the midst of pain and discomfort?
Dear Charlie knew that he was to be with Jesus in glory, but then he wanted something else; it was that Jesus might be with him here. So he wished everything around him to be just as Jesus would like to see it. Before Charlie was taken ill, he had pinned up a colored print on his wall, of a foolish subject; but now that Jesus had come so close to him, and the Holy Spirit had taught him what pleased Jesus, he looked on it with a very different eye. One day he turned to his sister, and said, "Alice, take that away, and burn it up; Jesus doesn't like to come in with that there; and I want Jesus to be here all the lime.”
Ah, my little Christian reader, do you want Jesus "all the time"? is nothing too dear or too precious to be done away with if it does not please Him?
So dear Charlie passed away; the end was very bright. "Nearly home," he whispered, as I sat by him a little while before he breathed his last. His latest moments were spent in loving appeals to his father, who he feared was not saved. "Oh, father," he said, "you are not happy; you never will be till you come to Jesus.”
Charlie knew where lasting peace and happiness were to be found, and from his lowly bed and cheerless room he passed to fullness of joy in the paradise of God. Absent from the body, he was present with the Lord. Oh, my young friend, are you happy? There is no real joy apart from Jesus. Whilst on earth Charlie knew Jesus, and then when death came, and he went into His presence, it was to meet the One whom he had known and trusted; there was no fear in his heart, for "perfect love casteth out fear." F. B.