A GENTLEMAN lay dying at middle age, after a busy life spent in a useful calling. An honorable upright man, well-meaning and popular, his life had yet been passed without God, and now the end had come. Was he happy? Far from it.
All his interest in his scientific work, in business, in pleasure had gone with the ability to go on with them, and he had no hope, no faith, in the great beyond.
He was a sad example of the warning of Ecclesiastes 12, “Remember now thy Creator... while the evil days come not... when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them,” and of the warning, “The world passeth away and the lust thereof” (1 John 2:1717And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. (1 John 2:17)).
An elderly woman had also come to the close of life. Day by day she was nearing the great eternity, but her mind was clear, her soul at rest, her faith in the Saviour she had long known and loved, bright. With a decided testimony to His grace she passed away, telling her friends, “I am going to my Father’s house.”
Reader, which ending to life would you choose? A dark gloomy exit, or a joyful going home, secure in the power and love of Him whose “grace is sufficient”?
While life and health remain, see to your immortal soul. Accept Jesus as Saviour, live to His praise, as this old woman did, and when death calls you His presence will be with you, and your eternal home be in “the Father’s house.”
W. S.