Death-beds
by J. C. Philpot
"The memory of the just is blessed;" and never more so
than when they have made a blessed end. To those who love them in life,
their memory is doubly dear when embalmed in the fragrance of a happy death;
and even from those who hated and persecuted them living, their dying
testimony has sometimes extorted the passing desire, "Let me die the death
of the righteous, and let my last end be like his."
The voice that sounds from the dying chamber,
where, amid weeping friends and sinking nature, grace manifests its last and
strongest triumphs before swallowed up in glory, must ever forcibly appeal
to feeling hearts. The same solemn hour awaits all. What, then will be their
feelings; what then their manifestations; what then their strength and
consolation; what then their faith, hope, love, joy, and peace; what views
then of the Lord Jesus and of their saving interest in him; what calm in
death, what support through death, what glory after death?—what living soul
does not, at times, ponder over these deep and solemn realities?
Every happy and peaceful death-bed, then, is not
only a proof of the Lord's faithfulness to the departed, but a source of
strength and encouragement to the living. As far as regards him, he is at
rest. Pain of body, anxiety of mind, afflictions in family or circumstances,
powerful temptations, the fiery darts of the wicked one, and, worse than
all, the plague of sin within, will trouble him no more. But we, who are
left behind in this valley of tears, who have still to struggle onward, amid
fightings without and fears within, may some times be encouraged by his
peaceful end to press on against every outward and inward obstacle, casting
ourselves wholly on Jesus, who is able to save to the uttermost all who come
unto God by him.
The death of the righteous at all times, but especially
when it has been signally attended by the presence and blessing of the Lord,
has something in it peculiarly softening and solemnizing. And if it be one
whom we have known and loved, and we have ourselves been eye-witnesses of
the solemn yet blessed scene, the effect produced is indeed far better felt
than described.
Their frailties and imperfections are all buried in the
grave. What they were as sinners, we forget; what they were as saints we
only remember. If, during life, we have not in all points seen eye to eye;
if in some things we have thought them wrong; if they have manifested any of
those imperfections and corruptions which we feel working in our own
bosoms—when the presence and love of their Lord and God have shed a sacred
halo over their closing days, all these passing shades are swallowed up in
that glorious light.
It, may, too, have been with them spiritually as we
sometimes see naturally. A gloomy morn may have ushered in a stormy day, and
only transient gleams of light may have burst at intervals through the
lowering sky; yet, at eventide, the winds are hushed, the clouds disperse;
and for some little time before the sun touches the horizon, the heavens are
clear, and the bright orb of day sheds all around his dazzling beams before
he is suddenly lost to view. And when gone, the golden twilight still
remains, as the reflection and remembrance of his departing glory. So, many
a saint who has had little else but temptation and trial, with but few
gleams of comfort, perhaps, during the greater part of his spiritual course,
has, on a dying bed, shone forth a blessed spectacle of what the grace of
God can do in that trying hour.
If such we have seen, and felt any measure of sweetness
and power at the sight, some rays of the departing glory seem to reach us;
and the remembrance afterwards of what we have seen and felt in that still
chamber is as the twilight—the object gone, but the rays remaining.