A nurse who was staying with us recently gave us an account of the worst death-bed she had witnessed. It was that of an infidel. He had preached infidelity. She tried to turn him from it to Christ, but without avail. He said he had sown the seed and plenty more would follow him. He cursed and swore terribly. At the last he raised himself in bed and said: “Can’t you hear the chains? Hold me, hold me, they are dragging me down.”
So he died, with a look of terror on his face, which remained there.
When one of his infidel friends came to have a last look at him he turned to nurse, and said, “Doesn’t he look dreadful.”
Nurse spoke to him very seriously, and begged him to do all in his power to unsow the seed his friend had sown. It was the means of his conversion.
What a contrast this to the death of a believer, an old man my father visited. He had not spoken for a week, and his friends said he would never speak again; but when my father spoke to him of the Saviour, and asked him if Jesus were precious to him, his face lit up, and he said in a tone of adoration: “Blessed be His holy name,” and these were his last words.
F. M. O.