Extract from Frances Havergal's Manuscript, in answer to a remark: "Death, which we ALL dread.”
No, not "ALL!" One who has seen and accepted God's way of salvation does not dread death. Perhaps I shall best express myself by making it very personal—just giving my own experience.
I do not fear death. Often I wake in the night and think of it, look forward to it, with a thrill of joyful expectation and anticipation. This would become impatience were it not that Jesus my Savior is also my Lord; and I feel I have work to do for Him that I would not shirk. And I know that His time to call me home will be the best and right time. Therefore I am content to wait.
One night I became conscious of certain symptoms which once before had attended an almost fatal attack of erysipelas of the brain. I knew, if earthly means failed, that would probably be my last night in this world. My mother attended to me, but alarmed no one. Then I was left alone in the bed. There, alone in the dark, I was fully aware that I might be nearing my last conscious hour on earth. Either healing sleep or fatal coma would soon set in.
I never spent a calmer, sweeter hour than that. I had not one shadow of fear! My soul rested in happy confidence in Him "whom I have believed.”
Was this a delusion? Could I be so deceived in the face of death, that great unmasker of all uncertainties? I knew it was not delusion, for "l know whom I have believed.”
Now how has this come to be the case with me? It was not always thus. I know as well as anyone what it is to "dread death." In past years I too had to put away the thought of its absolute certainty because I dared not look it in the face.
There was a time when as a lost sinner I saw clearly that I could not save myself. I deserved hell in many ways, but in one most of all—I owed the whole love of my heart to God and had not given one iota to Him. I knew that Jesus had so loved me as to die for me; and yet I, unmindful of it, had treated Him with daily, hourly ingratitude. I owed all my life—future and past—to God, and I had literally "nothing to pay." Nothing I could do, present or future, could atone for the past.
I saw the sinfulness of my heart and life and I could not make my heart better. "The soul that sinneth it shall die." So, unless my sin were taken away, my soul must die and go to hell! Anyhow, I must "stand before the judgment seat of Christ.”
Did I believe, and what?— that God must keep His word and punish sin; that He has punished it in the person of Jesus, our Substitute, "who His own Self bare our sins in His own body on the tree." 1 Peter 2:2424Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. (1 Peter 2:24).
If Jesus has paid my debt, and borne the punishment of my sins, I must simply accept this and believe Him. It became a real and true transaction. It is no theorizing but acting. I did this! I believed Him; I cast myself, utterly hopeless and helpless and lost, at the feet of Jesus. I took Him at His word and accepted what He had done for me.
Result? Joy, peace in believing, and a happy, full trust in Him, which death cannot touch.
Now my faith in Him is a reality of realities to me. It is so intertwined with my life that I know that nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ.
I cannot do without Jesus. I cannot and I do not live without Him. Mine is a new and different life in Him. This life and light which takes away all fear of death is what I want others to have and enjoy with me. F. R. H.