who ends in sin and shame, is this: He dare not comfort himself under the present wretchedness, by looking back to better days, when he thought he was safe. The fearful thing is that this present end of sin has power to blot out those better days: if a man, however fair his profession, end at last manifestly not a christian, this proves that he never was a christian at all! You see what tremendous issues depend upon the christian life ending well! It is little to say that ending ill is a sad thing at the time: it is that ending ill flings back a baleful light on all the days that went before! If the end be bad, then there was something amiss all along, however little suspected it may have been. It is only when the end is well over, that you can be perfectly sure you are safe. You remember Mr. Moultrie's beautiful poem, about his living children and his dead child. The living children were good were all he could wish: but God only knew how temptation might prevail against them as years went on but as for the dead one he was safe. It may be that the Tempter's wiles their souls from bliss may sever: But if our own poor faith fail not, he must be ours for ever!' Yes that little one had passed the End: no evil nor peril could touch him more. : I daresay you have sometimes found that for a day or two, a line of poetry or some short sentence of prose would keep constantly recurring to your memory. : I find it so; and the line is sometimes Shakspere's; sometimes Tennyson's: often it is from a certain Volume (the Best Volume) of which it is my duty to think a great deal. And I remember how, not long since, for about a week, the line that was always recurring was one by Solomon, king and philosopher (and something more): it was 'Better is the end of a thing than the beginning.' And at first I thought that the words sounded sad and more heathen-like than christian. Has it come to this, that God's Word tells us concerning the life God gave us, that the best thing that can happen to us is soonest to get rid of that sad gift; and that each thing that comes our way, is something concerning which we may be glad when it is over? I thought of Mr. Kingsley, and wondered if the sum of the matter, after all, is 'The sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep :' and of Sophocles, and how he said 'Not to be, is best of all: but when one hath come to this world, then to return with quickest step to whence he came, is next.' But then I saw, gradually, that the words are neither cynical nor hopeless; that they do but remind us of the great truth, that God would have our life here one of constant progress from good to better, and so the End best of all. We are to be 'forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those which are before,' because the best things are still before us. If things in this world go as God intended they should, then everything is a step to something else; something farther which ought to be an advance on what went before it; which ought to be better than what went before it. And above all, the End of our life here (if it end well), so safe and so happy, is far better than its Beginning, with all the perils of the voyage yet to come. I thought of these things the other Sunday afternoon, seeing the Beginning and the End almost side by side. At that service I did not preach: and I was sitting in a square seat in a certain church, listening to a very good sermon preached by a friend. A certain little boy, just four years old, came and sat beside me, leaning his head on me as a pillow and soon after the beginning of the sermon, the little man (very properly) fell sound asleep. And (attending to the sermon all the while) I could not but look down at the fat rosy little face, and the abundance of curly hair; the fresh, clear complexion, the cheerful, innocent expression; and think how fair and pleasing a thing is early youth;-how beautiful and hopeful is our life's Beginning. And after service was over, on my way home, I went to see a revered friend, who, at the end of a long christian life, was dying. There was the worn, ghastly face, with its sharp features: the weary, worn-out frame; the weakened, wandering mind, so changed from what it used to be. And standing by that good christian's bed, and thinking of the little child, I said to myself, There is the Beginning of life: Here is the End: what shall we say in the view of that sad contrast? And I thought, there and then, that Better is the end of a thing than the beginning!' Yes: better is the end of a dangerous voyage than its outset. You have seen a ship sailing away upon a long, perilous voyage over the ocean: the day was fair and sunshiny, and the ship looked gay and trim, with her white sails and her freshly painted sides. And you have seen a ship coming safe into port at the end of her thousands of miles over the deep, under a gloomy, stormy sky, and with hull and masts battered by winds and waves. And you have thought, I dare say, that better far was this ending, safe and sure, than even that sunshiny beginning, with all the risks before it. And here, in the worn figure on the weary bed, here is the safe end of the voyage of life! Oh what perils are yet before the merry little child! Who can say if that little one is to end in glory? But to the dying christian all these perils are over. He is safe, safe! And then, remember, this is not yet the end, you see. It is NOT the end, that weary figure, lying on that bed of pain. It is only the last step before the end. A very little: and how glorious and happy that sufferer will be! You would not wish to keep him here, when you think of all the blessedness into which the next step from this pain will bear him. Nay: but you may take up, in a sublimer significance than that of deliverance from mere earthly ill, the beautiful words of the greatest poet: Vex not his soul: oh let him pass! He hates him, 142 CHAPTER VI. GOING ON. THERE are many things of which you have a much more vivid perception at some times than at others. The thing is before you; but sometimes you can grasp it firmly, sometimes it eludes you mistily. You are walking along a country path, just within hearing of distant bells. You hear them faintly; but all of a sudden, by some caprice of the wind, the sound is borne to you with startling clearness. There is something analogous to that in our perceptions and feelings of many great facts and truths. Commonly, we perceive them and feel them faintly; but sometimes they are borne in upon us we cannot say how. Sometimes we get vivid glimpses of things which we had often talked of, but which we had never truly discerned and realized before. And for many days it has been so with me. I have seemed to feel the lapse of time with startling clearness. I have no doubt, my reader, that you have sometimes done the like. You have seemed to actually |