“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the stormy winter’s rages;
Thou thy earthly course hast run,
Home hast gone, and ta’en thy wages.”
Nothing for tears, or knocking of the breast. The words ring as solemnly as the bell. I cannot conceive of earthly thing more beautiful than such faithful, patient, diligent, ordered lives, rounded off by such mute and uncomplaining death-bed scenes. The fact that so they have been lived, so rounded off, for two thousand years makes them sacred, for me. How often has the good soul whose end I am awaiting now stood at her cottage door to mark the lingering of the light? May her passing be as gentle as this day’s has been!
The Westminster Press
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