A Triumphant Death Scene.
Go with me to the Epworth rectory. The venerable Samuel Wesley is dying; no, not dying, but languishing into life. John and Charles have been summoned from Oxford, and they are at the bedside. The faithful wife is so overcome that she cannot be present to witness the dying scene.
John sympathetically inquires, "Do you suffer much, father?" The dying man responds, "Yes, but nothing is too much to suffer for heaven. The weaker I am in body the stronger and more sensible support I feel from God." The dying saint lays his trembling hand on the head of Charles, and, like a true prophet, says, "Be steady! The Christian faith will surely revive in this kingdom. You shall see it, though I shall not." John inquires again, "Are you near heaven?" The dying rector joyfully responds, "Yes, I am." "Are all the consolations of God small with you, father?" The emphatic answer is, "No! no! no!"
He then called his children each by name, and said to them, "Think of heaven; talk of heaven! All the time is lost when we are not thinking of heaven." The hour came for his departure. The children knelt beside his bed; John prayed. As the prayer ended, in a feeble whisper the rector said, "Now you have done all." Again John prayed, commending the soul of his honored father to God. All was silent as the tomb. They opened their eyes, and the rector was with the Lord, "beholding the King in his beauty." "Can anything on earth be more beautiful," says one writer, "than such a death? It was indeed fitting that this tried, scarred Christian warrior should pass thus peacefully to his reward."
"Now," said his widow, in great sorrow, "I am appeased in his having so easy a death, and I am strengthened to bear it."
On the very day of the rector's funeral a heartless parishioner, to whom the rector owed seventy-five dollars, seized the widow's cattle to secure the debt. But it was such a deed as his godless people were ever ready to perpetrate. John came to the relief of his poor mother, and gave the woman his note for the amount.
Wesley is again at Oxford, intent on service for his Lord.