"Then in a nobler, sweeter song
I'll sing thy power to save
When this poor, lisping, stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave,"
the majestic voice that had thrilled courts and senates, was heard in a clear thrice-repeated "Amen! Amen! Amen!" And so he passed, let us hope, to have part in that final song. Pity, infinite pity, that he had not made more of that magnificent intellect for the Giver of it! But at least he was too great a man to deny the Love and the Sacrifice by which alone the life of the greatest as well as the feeblest can be saved from being an eternal tragedy.
I know, my dear A——, the derision with which all this may be received, but my hope is that you have passed beyond that point of intellectual self-conceit and moral self-murder. At all events, this is the only ground of a safe immortality that the Bible holds out, and beyond the Bible there is no ground. If you ever settle safely the solemn questions of the future, you will settle them here. If you ever find the rest for which I know you are weary, you will find it at the cross and in the presence of Him who hung upon it, and whose words are to-day, as of old, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest."
In all this I know there is nothing new to you. I had nothing new to say; I wished simply to make a plea for the faith of your earlier years. It is easy to put it aside, but, after all, it is a faith that will stand. The evidence of nineteen centuries from millions of honest and intelligent witnesses, of all ranks and conditions, living and dying, to the power of this faith to sustain in the most solemn crises of life, when flesh and heart are failing, and when the darkness and anguish and mystery of death are rocking the soul to its foundations, cannot wisely be dismissed as a delusion: there must be a reality behind it. The lights that have gone out from your own home and heart you were right in believing have "not gone out in darkness," but you will not forget that as they went into purer light they went with Him who has brought life and immortality to light, who is the Resurrection and the Life, in whom believing, though we were dead, yet shall we live.
Here I must rest. I can only commend you to God and to the word of his grace—to the written word and to the incarnate Word, to the Bible and to Christ. I am as certain as I am of my own existence that if you will give yourself up to the guidance of these you will be satisfied and you will be saved. If you will only take the Bible and follow it, you will find an assurance of its truth that cannot be shaken; you will find rest, for you will find Christ. And surely it is not too much to ask that in a matter of such infinite importance you make a fair, honest and thorough trial of that which no man ever yet made trial of to be disappointed.
Yet let me not fail to impress as a final thought that this result of good and of peace will come only by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is his to take of the things of Christ and show them to us; unless he does this, we cannot see them. My last word of entreaty, then, is—and I would make it as earnestly as conviction and feeling and language can make it—yield to the Spirit of God. The end you want is too great for your own strength. You have proved this. You have struggled on long enough in your own plans and your own way, seeking rest, and you are as far from rest as ever. Try now another way. Take hold of a higher strength. "Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find." I plead with you by all the memories of the past and by all the hopes of the future. You have sinned, and I would not heal the hurt slightly. No one knows better than you that if the Bible is true you have a long and dark account against you—if not of open and flagrant sin, yet to the Mind that makes no mistakes of that which is perhaps far worse, of calm, deliberate, persistent rejection of Christ and of his Spirit. It would be faithlessness and cruelty to hide the fact that by all the verities of God you are in peril—in fearful peril. To stand in darkness where no light is is sad enough; but when Light is come into the world and men stand in darkness, there is sin that seals its own doom. As the case is now, the very unrest of your soul—its dark gropings, its unsatisfied yearnings, its sighs of despair—all this is the living witness of your danger, the prophecy of a deeper gloom and woe to come.
But as yet it is also the voice of God's mercy; it is the plea of his Spirit calling you to the only rest that the universe has for the erring and the sinful. The Spirit of God is very pitiful. Every thought of good is from him; every desire for a better life is his inspiration; every penitent sigh is his breath. I believe he is not far from you; I believe, therefore, you are not far from the kingdom of heaven. Quench not the Spirit. Do not go down in darkness in sight of the City of Light.
You remember the circumstances of our return from Europe in the fall of 18—. We were young then, but the events are still vivid in my memory, as they are no doubt in yours. For two days we were delayed in Liverpool by a fearful storm. In that storm the Royal Charter was coming in, having made successfully the voyage of the world. She had been signaled, and was already in the Channel; her arrival was looked for every hour. Dear friends of those we were leaving were on board. The fires were lighted on the hearth, and the table was spread for the long-absent ones, and glad hearts were waiting impatiently to give them joyful welcome. But they never came; in sight of the harbor and of the lights of home they went down—the four hundred of that doomed ship. The next day we passed the silent wreck as we came out, and I am sure you thought, as I did, how unutterably sad and pathetic is such an end, to perish in sight of home.
Our voyage, dear A——, is almost over. The harbor is near; the lights of the eternal home are in sight; the table is spread, and dear ones—yours and mine—are waiting there to give us glad and everlasting welcome. Do not make wreck of life and hope and immortality in the very sight of home.
Yours, in the bonds of early years,