“Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.”
Longfellow.
A venerable minister of Christ left his home one bright, beautiful Sabbath morning, for the house of God. He was riding a restless, fiery mountain colt, but had no fears of his ability to manage him, as he had been raised from early childhood, as it were, on a horse’s back, and feared the wildest animal as little as he did a playful kitten.
He had gone but a short distance on his way, when the horse, becoming frightened, made a sudden leap, and threw his rider headlong against the projecting points of a large rock lying near the roadside. The rock entered his skull, and in a few moments that aged father in Israel breathed his last, with no kind friend near to whisper words of consolation in his dying ear, or wipe the sweat of death from his patriarchal brow.
The anxious congregation waited long and impatiently for the appearance of their much-loved pastor, but he came not. His spirit had winged its way to that bright, happy land,
“Where congregations ne’er break up,
And Sabbaths have no end.”