I LIFT my eyes. I look around the room in which I am writing. There are portraits on the wall — portraits of the dead: one, two, three, four — I can count a dozen.
They are the pictures of those who were once my best and dearest upon earth, and now they are gone — they are dead. I shall see them no more until I reach that better land where there will be “no more death, neither... crying.”
I look back over the years of life. What is to be noted? There are certain milestones — events which mark the years as they glide by — and these milestones are generally a death. In such and such a year I lost a brother, in another my mother, my dearest friend, my father; and so it goes on―
“Death like a shadow rests on all below,
E’en fairest landscape wears a tint of woe.”
What is coming next? My own death. Let it not be thought that I would omit or forget the Lord’s coming; I assume only for the moment that death may occur before He comes. It is well for each to face it. If a backward glance over the earthly journey make the death-milestones stand out in startling array, the future will naturally be much the same; could we undraw the curtain for one instant, we should see the same vista of milestones ahead — my death, your death, and so on. Are you afraid? You ought to be, unless you are sheltered by the blood. Yes, unless the precious blood of the Lamb without spot or blemish has been sprinkled outside your house, that destroying angel, that king of terrors, ought to be a horror, a nightmare, to you.
I was looking down the death column of a newspaper the other day. There I saw recorded the death of a rich man well known in bygone years. I remember him on one occasion especially. He had come to the house full of civility and to do a favor. He encountered more than he expected. He was met by a man — once as worldly as himself — who, having been converted out and out during a recent revival, was now an earnest Christian, and anxious that others should have the same Saviour too. He had weighed the relative value of the world and Christ. So he buttonholed him at once, and I overheard him ask: “Do you know the value of the blood of Christ?” It made a great impression on me at the time. Let me repeat the question to you: “Do you know the value of the blood of Christ?”
“His blood has made the vilest clean, His blood availed for me.”
If this be your reply, you need not be afraid to die. The blood was the sign to the destroying angel that night in Egypt. He would not have dared to enter any house with such a mark upon it — the blood of the lamb slain by the owner of the house and struck on the posts and on the lintel of his door; it was God’s seal on that dwelling: all inside belonged to Him, and all were safe. Like the scarlet line on Rahab’s house, it was a “true token.” Those within her house knew about it, and they accepted the shelter. If you are docketed thus, if the blood of Jesus be your “true token,” if it have cleansed you from all sin, never mind the milestones and the portraits of the dead. We may be glad to die if death be entrance into the presence of the One who did so much for us. Think what it cost Him! Think of the spear that pierced His side and caused the blood to flow for you, for me!
“Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood’
Shall never lose its power,
Till every blood-washed saint of God
Be saved to sin no more.”
H. L. H.