ONE Sunday, in the year 188―when staying in the town of A―, near Glasgow, I was asked to visit a dying man, who lay in a little cottage nearby. This I gladly consented to do, and a few minutes’ walk brought myself and a companion to the sick man’s door. We do not naturally like to look upon death, or even to think of it, but in the school of Christ, who robbed it of its sting, we learn to take a deep interest in those who are going down into the valley of the shadow of death. I was anxious to learn what were the feelings of this dying man, and, if possible, to cheer him with the hope of a home beyond the grave. Entering the house, we found his wife weeping by the bedside; and it needed no special knowledge to see that the life of the sick man was fast ebbing away. Taking his thin, wasted hand into mine, and bending over the bed, I asked him as simply and affectionately as I could, what were his hopes as to the world beyond. Speaking as one who had experience of His power, I told him of Jesus, the Mighty to save, and said at parting, “Shall we meet again? I am going to heaven; shall we not meet there?”
Slowly raising his eyes to mine, he replied painfully, and with a sigh, “I’ll be there— or somewhere else! very soon.”
It was a solemn answer, solemnly given, and I could see that the poor sufferer, by the emphasis he laid on his last words, was uncertain as to where he was to spend the eternity into which he passed a short time afterward.
Consider carefully the dying man’s reply, “In heaven— or somewhere else!”
Why are men so averse to using the word hell? Is it not that the very name of a place so terrible is terrible? And is it not, in the case of thousands, from a shuddering horror of what conscience whispers is the impending doom?