YOU have had many happy death-bed scenes told you in these pages, and a grand testimony they are to the power of the Holy Spirit to lift the one who is rejoicing in Christ Jesus above suffering and weakness, and freeing him from the terrors of death.
Today, however, I am going to tell you of a very miserable death, and I trust the terrible story will speak a word of warning to you, not so much in view of your death as in exhortation as to your present life.
Come with me to an old house in a back street of a great American city. An air of mystery, as well as of poverty, hangs over the place, which, until the day I invite your visit, has been shunned by the inhabitants of the adjoining houses. Now, in spite of the intense cold, an unusual throng of people hovers around the hitherto deserted building. The door, which for many years had been kept jealously closed against all intruders, is thrown wide open, and, though no word of welcome is heard, the crowd presses into the cheerless dwelling.
We enter with the first corners, and passing quickly through the filthy passage, littered with rubbish and hanging cobwebs, we reach the kitchen. Oh! what a dreary place it is! The piercing wintry blast shrieks through broken panes in the window, and howls down the chimney, unopposed by any bright ascending flame. We shiver as we step across the dirty, uneven floor, looking around in vain for any occupant of the forlorn abode. Wait what lies on those old sacks in the corner? Well may we shrink back, our blood running cold as our horrified gaze falls on the almost skeleton bodies of two old men. Torn shirts and ragged trousers fail to conceal the gaunt, wasted limbs; there is no need to tell us that life has been some days extinct in those sunken eyeballs. Oh, horrible sight! What does it all mean? Why were those aged men left thus to die, without food, or clothing, or warmth? Was there no eye to pity, no heart to care for them, that they perished thus, alone and forsaken? Who is to blame when, at the coroner’s inquest, the verdict is brought in “Death from starvation and cold”? You will hardly believe me when I tell you the startling fact that there was no one to blame but themselves, and yet so it was. This awful end had come to them while surrounded with wealth, as was fully proved on searching the house.
But, before we go further, let me give you a few details as to the past history of the pitiable inmates of that miserable dwelling. Its owner, in younger days, had been a prosperous man of business. God had allowed him to succeed in what he put his hand to, and he had become a man of wealth. But, by one of those strange wiles by which the god of this world torments those under his power, he contrived that the love of the money, and not its use, should fill the heart of the unhappy man. Instead of enjoying such comforts as his riches could have supplied, the miser lived in the utmost misery and want, that these riches might accumulate. Clad in rags, shabby and forlorn, he hobbled about, collecting his rents and interest money, which he bore home to conceal in chinks and crannies of the old house. By what strange infatuation, or chain of circumstances, his companion came to share his miserable life, and thus participate in his terrible end, I cannot tell. All that is known is that they lived in a state of apparently abject poverty together for a period of upwards of twenty years.
We turn from the ghastly sight in the kitchen, and, mounting the creaking stairs, find the coroner’s clerk, with a searching party, examining the bedroom of the old miser. Squalid poverty and dirt seem here again to reign supreme. Yet, as we gaze on the comfortless-looking bed, with moth-eaten coverlet, and worn time-discoloured sheets, where we picture the feeble, restless limbs of the avaricious old man vainly seeking rose, we discover a tarnished silver dollar. “Ah!” you exclaim, “if only he or his friend had gone to the nearest bakers with that one piece of money, this dismal fate might have been averted!” Yes, indeed, that one neglected piece of silver raises its silent testimony to the mad folly which caused the awful death of its owner. Alas! we find accumulated proof of his guilt. Hanging on the footboard of the bed is a bag containing 945 dollars in gold coin; then we come upon another with 500 dollars; then a roll of dusty paper containing forty more gold pieces, and so on, and so on, until, sick at heart, we turn from that bed and its many witnesses to the insane infatuation of him who for years had lain down there in cold and hunger, while his gold and silver cankered around him.
As the darkness and piercing cold suspend the search, the clerk clears the house, and carefully locks and bars the door. We have no sympathy with his tone of triumph, as he tells us they are bearing away 94,715 dollars from that room alone. Shuddering with horror, we walk away, our hearts heavy as we think of the old miser and his comrade, lying in their dirty rags, starved and frozen, in the midst of treasures of silver and gold and wealth incalculable.
My reader, let me ask you, are you a miser? “No, indeed,” you answer, “far from it; I spend my income only too quickly, and have no upbraiding bags of gold hanging about my room.” And yet, pardon me, like him of whom we have been speaking, you may be perishing with treasures around you which you are neglecting to use, and which may for all eternity rise up in judgment against you. Are you yet unsaved? Perhaps, uneasily, you own you are; you have known it for some time; you have not liked to face the fact, but it does come to your mind at times, and a voice that will not be silenced tells you that you have not peace, pardon, life, as others whom you know possess. You own the sore need of your soul; there are moments when it truly troubles you, and then you wish you had the joy and satisfaction that some whom you love, rejoice in.
Dear reader, is this the case? If so, and you are awake to the fact that you are in want—aye, ready to perish with hunger, have you heard nothing of the “bread enough and to spare” of the Father’s house? (Luke 15:1717And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! (Luke 15:17).) Has no report reached your ear of the “riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:77In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; (Ephesians 1:7)), who is “rich in mercy” to the needy sinner (Eph. 2:44But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, (Ephesians 2:4))? Then why, oh! why do you not say, “I will arise and go to my Father?” “Why sit ye here until ye die” (2 Kings 7:33And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die? (2 Kings 7:3)) of soul-hunger and thirst when so ample a feast is spread for “whosoever will”? Are you not, while neglecting this great salvation which God has brought so nigh to you in Christ Jesus, repeating in your soul’s history with awful intensity the horrible story of this miser? Are you recklessly drifting on to an eternity in hell, careless, it may be, of solemn warnings from the evangelist―trampling, perhaps, on the loving counsels of a father, the tender pleadings of a mother, or the gentle voice of a little child that would seek to win you to Jesus? Oh! if it is so, dare you say you are no miser? Are you not, like him, perishing of self-willed hunger and misery, and that, too, when within touch of everlasting riches? What were his neglected sacks of gold compared with these neglected riches of eternity? Alas! alas! over how many millions in hell might not the verdict, pronounced over those skeleton bodies, knell forth of self-destruction, soul-starvation, while surrounded with all the boundless wealth of the love, mercy, and grace of God? D. & A.C.