Chaper 8
Why had it now a new significance? Often she had heard it sung in sacred songs, but all at once it had sprung before her vision, endowed with a new and different meaning. Jesus: Who was he? What had He to do with her? Why should it be a solace to read of Him in sickness? How did He come on earth? When? To whom? It seemed as if for one little moment a light had flashed upon her, more beautiful, more glorious than all the pleasure she has ever experienced, and had been as suddenly sealed up again.
“It is strange,” she murmured to herself, “that I have never thought of it before, and yet I suppose at some time or another we will wish we had.”
“Here is Sarah— she will take the book to father,” cried Lilly entering the room with one of the maids, and soon the wasted invalid was reading the Holy Word, while his little daughter, perched at the foot of his bed, fixed her bright eyes upon him, as if she would read his heart—as if the happy moment. would come while he read, so that he could murmur, smiling as little Danny did, “I can say ‘Jesus’.”
“How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
In a believer’s ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.”
Little Daniel grew weaker every day, and soon the end came.
“Mother,” said he one day, “do you think,”—the voice was fainter than it had ever sounded before— “do you think the angels will come for me?”
“Yes, darling. I have no doubt they will.”
“O, mother, Jesus is with me.” She kissed the damp forehead and dried the thin hands between her own palms. “Mother, it will be better for me to go to my heavenly home, than to live here a great many years and suffer, won’t it?”
“Yes, dear, if it is God’s will,” replied his mother,
“And does it make you feel very bad to give me up?”
“No, my child”—the mother’s voice was low and quiet,— “for I give you into better hands than mine. I shall be very lonesome, darling, without my little sick boy, but one thought will always comfort me; he is in a Home where he will never know want or pain.”
Little Charlie was put in his bed, and the widow prepared to sit all night by the side of her little sufferer.
It seemed as if death could not be here; or, if it was, that as a bright gentle messenger, it came. Often Mrs. Marks thought of the dream her little Daniel had described, where the walls were covered with shining, precious, stones, brighter than the sun, while the messenger of death—say of life, rather—waited for him.
The moon shone brightly, clear as day dawn and its soft beams lay on the bedspread that covered the child. Mrs. Marks might have called in some neighbor, and there were many who would gladly have watched with her, but the window could not bear that his parting hours should be spent in the presence of a stranger.
They had sweet messages to give each other and the motnents were hallowed. Many times he murmured, “Good night, dear mother, till tomorrow,” and she often thought she saw the shadow that comes but once. At last he spoke no more, but smiling peacefully, fixed his full blue eyes upon her, and slowly the light faded out of them, gone from time into ETERNITY.
It was a beautiful deathbed, or translation rather, and for many moments the widowed mother sat looking upon that peaceful face.
“Absent from the body, present with the Lord, to suffer no more,” she.muured, as she wept and kissed the eyes she had closed.
“O, my dear one! I would not call von back. No; I could not call you back.”
When Charlie sprang from his bed in the morning, and wondered at the stillness of the room, his mother took him gently to where the dear one lay, and when he gazed up, grieved and heart stricken, into her face, she kissed his rosy lips and said softly.
“Try to bear it, Charlie, remember you are all mother has left.”
“But, my dear brother, I want him,” cried the child,
“Ah,” said the mother, “Jesus wanted him too!”
ML 08/10/1941