Catharine | Page 4

beautiful objects. To illustrate this, I have mentioned several of the incidents already related.
She spoke of a young friend, who has much that the world gives its votaries to enhance her prospects in this life. I said, "Would you exchange conditions with her?" "Not for ten thousand worlds," was her energetic reply. "No!" she added; "I fear she has not chosen the good part."
Sabbath afternoon, the mortal conflict was upon her. The restlessness of death, the craving for some change of posture, the cold sweats, the labored respiration, all had the effect merely to make her ask, "How long do you think I must suffer?" That labored breathing tired her; she wished that I could regulate it for her. "How long," said she, "will it probably continue?"
I told her that heaven was a free gift at the last as well as at first; that we could not pass within the gate at will, but must wait God's time; that there were sufferings yet necessary to her complete preparation for heaven, of which she would see the use hereafter, but not now. This made her wholly quiet; and after that she rode at anchor many hours, hard by the inner lighthouse, waiting for the Pilot.
The last words which she uttered to me, an hour before she died, were, "I am going to get my crown." I wondered at her in my thoughts, (O, help my unbelief!) to hear a dying sinner so confident. I said to myself, "O woman, great is thy faith." She knew that her crown was a free gift, purchased at infinite expense; a crown, instead of deserved chains, under darkness. All unmerited, and more than forfeited, yet she spoke of her crown, because she believed with a simple faith, taking Christ at his word, and being willing to receive rewards and honors from him without projecting her own sense of unworthiness to stay the overflowings of infinite love and grace towards her. So that, in her own esteem as undeserving as the chief of sinners, thinking as little as possible of her own righteousness, and being among the last to claim any thing of God, she could say with one who would not admit that any sinner was chief above him, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing."
Between two and three o'clock on Monday afternoon, January 19, she was quietly receiving some food from the nurse, when suddenly she said, "The room seems dark." She then made a surprising effort, such as she had been incapable of for some time, and reached forward from her pillow, saying, "Who is that at the door?" The nurse was with her alone, and at her side, the family being at the table. Coming to her room, we found that she was apparently sinking into a deep sleep, as though it were only a sleep, profound and quiet.
I asked her if she knew me.
She made no answer.
I said, "You know Jesus." A smile played about her mouth. We rejoiced, and wept for joy.
I then said, "If you know father, press my hand." She gave me no sign--that smile being her last intelligent act.--And so she passed within the veil.
I was able to relate all this from my pulpit the Sabbath after her decease, not merely because the period of the greatest suffering under bereavement had not come, but chiefly because the consolations of the trying scene, and hopes full of immortality, had not lost their new power. I was therefore like those who, on the first Christian Sabbath morning, "departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy, and did run to bring his disciples word."
It is intimated above that the greatest suffering at the death of a friend does not occur immediately upon the event. It comes when the world have forgotten that you have cause to weep; for when the eyes are dry, the heart is often bleeding. There are hours,--no, they are more concentrated than hours,--there are moments, when the thought of a lost and loved one, who has perished out of your family circle, suspends all interest in every thing else; when the memory of the departed floats over you like a wandering perfume, and recollections come in throngs with it, flooding the soul with grief. The name, of necessity or accidentally spoken, sets all your soul ajar; and your sense of loss, utter loss, for all time, brings more sorrow with it by far than the parting scene.
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She who was the sweet singer of my little Israel is no more. The child whose sense of beauty made her the swiftest herald