TWENTY miles from camp, and night approaching. A young home missionary, working for his Master in one of the mining communities of Colorado, found himself in this situation one day, and was beginning to look about him for a desirable place in which to spend the night, when, a little way ahead, he descried a rude cabin.
Approaching nearer, he saw it was one of the poorest of these rough habitations, and much of the “chinking” between the logs had fallen out, rendering the place additionally uncomfortable.
“Such a place as that is surely deserted,” said the young minister to himself; “and I am inclined to think I would rather sleep out of doors tonight than inside that shell, even if it should prove to be inhabited by one who would make me welcome:”
At that moment the sound of song floated out through the openings between the logs, and our traveler stopped his horse to listen to the man’s weak voice singing that dear old home song, “The home of the soul.”
“Oh, that home of the soul! in my visions and dreams
Its bright jasper walls I can see,
Till I fancy but dimly the veil intervenes
Between that fair city and me.”
were the words that reached the ear of the listener outside.
“I must see the man who can sing like that in such a place as this,” thought the missionary, riding up to the cabin and alighting from his horse.
A feeble “Come in!” came from within in answer to his knock; and entering, he found himself in the one small room of the cabin, which was almost destitute of furniture.
In one corner a rude bedstead had been constructed of boards and pieces of timber, on which some old blankets were spread; and on this hard bed lay a man evidently very near to death.
“Dying alone, in this situation, twenty miles from the nearest camp, still his look into the beyond seemed so clear, so real, that the language of the hymn he feebly sung was indeed the language of his heart,” said the missionary, as he related the incident afterward. “He died that night, and I have never ceased to feel a thrill of thankfulness whenever I think of him, that I was belated that day, and so enabled to be with that man when the end came.” Surely that which satisfies a man when dying in the midst of such surroundings is not a thing to be lightly rejected. When a young man leaves the home of his boyhood, he cannot afford to leave the religion of Christ too!