C——.
Since these letters were written, he to whom they were addressed has gone where human arguments and pleadings cannot reach him. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he passed from the scenes of a busy, honored and prosperous life into the solemn mysteries that lie beyond our horizon. On his desk was found the following unfinished letter, written the night before his death:
My Dear C——:
I have not misapprehended the spirit and motive of your letters. I have read them—more than once—with care and, I believe, with candor. When a man stands in the shadow of a great and awful change—and my physician warns me that my lifework may end suddenly—he is a fool who deals any other way than seriously and honestly with the questions you discuss. If I cannot say that your reasoning removes all my doubts, I can most sincerely say this, even though it may be, in your judgment, at the cost of my consistency: I would give the world to have your faith and hope. While I have been glad to have the arguments of Mr. —— to support my own faith or want of faith, I will be candid and say that I have not been at rest. Life has been terribly empty and hopeless since I felt, with Professor Clifford, that "the Great Companion is dead." I have had success, as the world goes, but what of it? What does it amount to? What is to be the end of it all? No God! No immortality! Nothing beyond this little circle whose utmost limit I seem to be even now touching! Is it so?
I am writing at midnight—an hour when these questions often come to me with the pressure of despair. Oh to be a child again with a child's faith, a child's peace! My mother—
Here the letter ended. Did the thought of his mother open the door of his aching heart to his mother's God and his mother's Christ? So let us hope. There is a mercy that is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear God, and a righteousness that is unto children's children to such as keep his covenant.
Lying upon the letter was the following slip, cut from a newspaper. It was stained apparently with tears, and was probably the last thing that my friend read. It could hardly be the expression of any heart to whom the "hand of mercy" was not already "opening the wicket-gate:"
"'Mid the fast-falling shadows,
Weary and worn and late,
A timid, doubting pilgrim,
I reach the wicket-gate.
Where crowds have stood before me
I stand alone to-night,
And in the deepening darkness
Pray for one gleam of light.