32. Payson Dying Words to the Young Men of his Congregation.
Payson Dying Words to the Young Men of his Congregation
" I felt desirous that you might see that the religion I have preached can support me in death. You know that I have many ties which bind me to earth: a family to which I am strongly attached, and a people whom I love almost as well; but the other world acts like a much stronger magnet, and draws my heart away from this.
" Death comes every night and stands by my bedside in the form of terrible convulsions, every one of which threatens to separate the soul from the body. These grow worse and worse till every bone is almost dislocated with pain. Yet while my body is thus tortured, the soul is perfectly, perfectly happy and peaceful. I lie here and feel these convulsions extending higher and higher, but my soul is filled with joy unspeakable! I seem to swim in a flood of glory which God pours down upon me. Is it a delusion that can fill the soul to overflowing with joy in such circumstances ? If so, it is a delusion better than any reality. It is no delusion. I feel it is not. I enjoy this happiness now. And now, standing as I do on the ridge that separates the two worlds—feeling what intense happiness the soul is capable of sustaining, and judging of your capacities by my own, and believing that those capacities will be filled to the very brim with joy or wretchedness forever, my heart yearns over you, my children, that you may choose life and not death. I long to present every one of you with a cup of happiness and see you drink it.
"A young man," he continued, "just about to leave the world, exclaimed, ’ The battles fought, the battles fought, but the victory is lost forever!’ But I can say, ’The battles fought, and the victory is won—the victory is won forever!’ I am going to bathe in the ocean of purity, and benevolence, and happiness, to all eternity. And now, my children, let me bless you, not with the blessing of a poor, feeble, dying man, but with the blessing of the infinite God." He then pronounced the apostolic benediction.