But how different all this is in the case of the Christian man. He has been preparing, all his life through, for the world to come. His conversation--his "citizenship--is in Heaven[#];" and in death he recognises the method by which his dear Lord calls him home. There is no sting, no agony, in the Christian's death; Jesus, his Saviour, took that away long ago. There have been death-beds, on which men lay with bodies racked with aching pains, or horribly mutilated, and yet the look on their faces was perfectly happy. The body indeed was suffering agony, but the mind was feasting on visions of a far-off land. and a kindly Saviour ready to receive the redeemed one home. Oh, yes, there is something grand and striking about the Christian's death. The invisible spirits of God ascending and descending, as of old they did to the sleeping Jacob at Bethel, keep bringing stores of comfort to his soul.
[#] Phil. iii. 20.
Among the many grand and noble deaths which history records, I know of none grander in its simplicity or more precious in its lessons, than that of Commodore Goodenough in our own day. He had gone ashore with a boat's crew, on one of the South Sea Islands; when he was surrounded, and attacked by the natives, who were exasperated at the cursed man-stealing trade which has brought discredit on the English name. The Commodore was wounded by an arrow, which chanced to be poisoned; but this he did not know. Nor was it till his ship was nearing Adelaide, that he discovered that his wound was mortal. And then beneath the open sky, far from his English home, on the deck of his vessel in which he had sailed over those summer seas, he called his men around him; and as the rough seamen, one after another, gathered quickly round their dying chief, he looked upon them, with the films of death already settling on his glazing eyes, and said, "My men, I want you to serve God." These were the last words he ever spoke to them, and then his spirit passed away to join the vast multitude before the throne of that God he had loved and served so well.
The death of a Christian is indeed precious from the lessons we learn from it. But in order to die a Christian's death, remember you must live a Christian's life, and then you may say with Balaam--"Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his[#]."
[#] Num. xxiii. 10.
LAST WORDS.
"On what has now been sown
Thy blessing, Lord, bestow;
The power is Thine alone
To make it spring and grow."
Newton.
We have now reached the last chapter of these readings, and the last words must be spoken.
We have thought together upon life and death; upon humility and self-denial, those "two graces peculiarly Christian." I have spoken of our duties to our parents and to our children respectively; of work of various kinds on earth, and of rest in our Father's kingdom. And now, reader, that it is almost time for us to part, let us "gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost[#]."
[#] S. John vi. 12.