RELIGIOUS VIEWS
My aunt was a passionately religious woman. Her faith was the inspiration of her whole life, and it is safe to say that from the smallest to the greatest things there was never a struggle between conscience and inclination in which conscience was not victorious. As she grew older, I fancy that she became a less orthodox member of the Church of England, to which she belonged, but her love for Christ and for His people never wavered.
As each Sunday came round during her last illness, when she could not go to church, she used to say to a very dear sister, "Now, J., we must have our little service." Then the bedroom door was left ajar, and her sister would go down to the drawing-room and play the simple hymns they had sung together in childhood. And on the last Sunday, the day before her death, when the invalid lay in a stupor and seemed scarcely conscious, that same dear sister played the old hymns once more, and as the sound floated up to the room above those who watched there saw a gleam of pleasure on the dying woman's face.
My aunt had no fear of death. There had been a time, some weeks before the end, when her feet had wandered very close to the waters which divide us from the unknown shore, and she told her sisters afterwards that she had almost seemed to see over to the "other side," and that so many of those she loved were waiting for her, and saying, "Come over to us, Sally. We are all here to welcome you."
Perhaps just at the last, when her body had grown weak, the journey seemed rather far, and she clung to earth more closely, but such weakness was purely physical. The brave spirit was ready to go, and as the music of her favourite hymn pierced her consciousness when she lay dying, so surely the words summed up all that she felt or wished to say, and formed her last prayer in death, as they had been her constant prayer in life:
"In death's dark vale I fear no ill
With Thee, dear Lord, beside me;
Thy rod and staff my comfort still,
Thy Cross before to guide me.
"And so through all the length of days
Thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing Thy praise
Within Thy house for ever."