One second of time
is more than long enough for it; but eternity does not outlast it.
In that wonderfully wise and tender and poetic book, the "Layman's
Breviary," Leopold Schefer says,--
"A smile suffices to smile death away;
And love defends thee e'en from wrath divine!
Then let what may befall thee,--still smile on!
And howe'er Death may rob thee,--still smile on!
Love never has to meet a bitter thing;
A paradise blooms around him who smiles."
Death-Bed Repentance.
Not long since, a Congregationalist clergyman, who had been for forty-one
years in the ministry, said in my hearing, "I have never, in all my
experience as a pastor, known of a single instance in which a repentance
on what was supposed to be a death-bed proved to be of any value whatever
after the person recovered."
This was strong language. I involuntarily exclaimed, "Have you known many
such cases?"
"More than I dare to remember."
"And as many more, perhaps, where the person died."
"Yes, fully as many more."
"Then did not the bitter failure of these death-bed repentances to bear
the tests of time shake your confidence in their value under the tests of
eternity?"
"It did,--it does," said the clergyman, with tears in his eyes.
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