He was just twenty-one years of age, strong and healthy, yet a little more than one week’s illness laid him low. Dear boys, who read this, are you looking forward to the time when you shall be of age? When you can call yourself a man? Then let me tell you of this one who at that age was called upon to die. There are two or three things I want to call to your attention about Jack. One was, that he was not afraid to die. And why was this, do you think? Was he not a sinner? And does not God say, “The wages of sin is death”? Oh, yes. But Jack could say —yes, did say, “I am trusting in the Lord my Saviour.” “The sting of death is sin,” but when we know Jesus as our Saviour, the sin is gone, and so death has no sting for the believer. Another thing I will tell you about Jack, he did not care to get well and live longer in this world. When asked what he wanted, he said, “I want to go home.” Home, for him, was where the Lord who loved him dwelt. Another thing, he was anxious for all his friends to go to that same home. One after another he called to his bedside, asking them to promise to meet him in heaven. Some of them have since that time believed in the. Lord Jesus Christ as their own Saviour. God grant that all may, before it is too late, take Jack’s Saviour for their own. Over his open grave we sang his favorite hymn:
“Come sinners view the Lamb of God.
Wounded and dead and bathed in blood;
Behold His side, and venture near,
The well of endless life is there.
Come away, come away,
Let Jesus wash your sins away.
ML 01/04/1903