IN a poor unwholesome home, a little time ago, a father died of fever. He left as desolate a some as I had ever seen. On the burial night, his widow and children were seated by the fire; the only daughter, a child of ten years, looking with a wearied look into her mother’s face said, “Mother, how sore my head is!” Next day fever in her was also developed, and for the safety of the rest she was ordered to the infirmary. She was one of our Sunday school children. Just before the twilight hour the Infirmary van came to take her. In times of trouble you often see among the poor a quiet strength that rises to heroism. When the wheels of the van were heard in the lane, and pausing at the door, there was simply “Maggie, they have come for you now.” To prepare to go, the child at once raised her aching head from the pillow, with her artless, “Mother, ye ken I may not come back to you again. Will the man wait till I sing my hymn?” And with a quivering voice she began with,
“Come, sing to are of heaven,
When I’m about to die,
Sing songs of holy ecstasy
To watt my soul on high.”
After a moment’s pause she took up the chorus of another favorite hymn with our scholars: ―
“Here in the body pent,
Absent from thee I roam,
Yet nightly pitch lily moving tent
A day’s march nearer home, Nearer home.”
And so they carried the ailing child that night, with joyous thoughts like these filling her young heart, to pitch her tent in the place where the journey from this to the eternal world is so short and so often made.
O blessed Salvation, this of Jesus! Blessed to the child of ten as well as to the sage of seventy years. “This is but a child’s religion,” you say: Yes, and is it not the glory of the Gospel that it does give strength and gladness to the young heart? The most childlike are most blessed by it. Jesus the loving Saviour will yet, as when on earth, deal gently with the little ones; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.