A Glorious Sunset

It was Sunday evening. The last rays of the setting sun fell upon the sweet, pale face of a young girl, whose days, like those of the infidel, were numbered. She was many thousand miles away from her home, and, oh, how she longed to see it once more! She took up her pen, and with great difficulty, for she was very, very weak, she began to write a letter to a friend in the far-off native land. Young, attractive, and full of energy and brightness, life had looked very fair before her, but now she knew that all would have to be left behind. Health and strength, home and friends, had already been left behind; yet she could write from the land of exile which had not brought the looked-for restoration: “I would not have been without the time here. The Lord has been so good to me in giving me a sense of His love and tenderness just when I do indeed need it.”
Until latterly she had hardly expected death, but now she saw what was before her. “It is plain to me now, H., dearest,” she wrote, “that it is not the Lord’s intention to restore my health.”
And how did she look at the prospect before her? Did she mourn over her young life so early blighted? Did she tremble at the thought of facing eternity? Or did she try to forget what was coming, and trifle away the few days Oat were left? Listen to the words she wrote that Sunday evening: “In the little Wesleyan chapel near here they have just been singing, ‘Forever with the Lord.’ It is lovely, to think that we do get nearer home every day. I constantly count the time till I shall see my own dear earthly home, but there are so many dangers to encounter ere we reach it, whereas not one lies between us and that bright home, where there is no sorrow or pain, and more than all, where we shall see Him who fills heaven.”
And soon she saw Him. The earthly home was never reached, for on the way the Lord whom she loved took her away out of all her pain and weariness — put her to sleep so gently and so quickly that she seemed hardly to know she was going, and now she rests with Him. She is indeed “forever with the Lord.”
Dear friend, your death may be very near. How will you meet it? How will your last breath be spent? Remember, the only difference of the wide, wide difference between the two of whose deaths you have been reading was that, one had rejected God’s offer of salvation, and the other had accepted it. If you should die today, would it be “sinking into hell,” or going to see “Him who fills heaven”?
C. H. P.