A DEAR man, named John Phillips, passed away, some time ago, at the age of thirty-six, after five months of great suffering. He was converted some years before his last illness. His two little children died, within a week of each other, just one year before the father’s death. Dear little Lizzie, the elder one, loved to go to chapel every Sunday with her father, and it was indeed a heavy sorrow for both father and mother to be called on to part with their darlings; but after John was taken ill, and knew that he could not get better, he said that “his prayers had been answered, for he was sure that, after his death, his wife could not have supported the children, had they lived.” Thus the Lord enabled him to see and own that God’s way was best.
A sudden shock made him ill, a shock from which he never recovered; he broke a blood-vessel and went into a decline. He had no wish to get well again; he knew that he was going, and, better still, he knew where he was going. During his illness he frequently read the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth chapters of John’s Gospel, and his wife still carefully preserves his Bible, with the worn and soiled marks made by his holding it.
One day, when John was suffering very much, a friend, Mrs. P., called to see him. As she stood by his side, she exclaimed,
“Oh! my poor fellow!”
“Do you call me poor?” he replied. “No, I am rich, and it is you that are poor, if you do not know Christ. I am rich in Christ.”
At another time he said, “Do you wish me to be restored to health? I want to go. I am ready.”
On the last day of John’s life he said to the doctor, “I hear the trumpet sound; I shall soon be there.”
His removal was most quiet and peaceful. His wife was sitting by his side, and as she looked at him he ceased to breathe, and was gone.
Reader, are you thus calmly resting in Christ? Can you, too, say that you are not “poor,” but “rich in Christ”? H. L. T.