Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/444



most sacred day in a man’s life is the day of his death. The last and great day of his transformation.

“Hast thou deeply and earnestly thought of this day which will inevitably bring thy last earthly hour?”

There was once a man with a strong religious belief, who argued boldly for the truth of God’s word, a law in himself, and a zealous servant of God.

He lay at last on his death-bed, and by it stood the angel of death, with a heavenly countenance.

“Thy hour-glass has run down,” he said, as he touched the dying man’s feet with his finger, and they became icy cold. Then he touched his forehead and his heart. The thread of life snapped, and the soul was free to follow the angel of death.

In the twinkling of an eye they were gone, while the soul’s first initiation began by the strange appearance of great black, foamy billows, which rolled over him in a throng from head to foot, and the events of his whole life were brought to his memory as the billows rolled over him.

He could look down through the waves to the giddy deep beneath him, and with a glance like lightning through immeasurable space, in which sparkled myriads of suns, stars, and planets impossible to number, yet clearly perceptible in the unlimited universe.

The spirit on the confines of immortality shook with dread as he knew himself to be guilty, and had nothing to support his claim for mercy, as he felt himself sinking into unbounded vacuity.

With only his own goodness to trust to, God would perhaps give him rest; and with childlike faith and trust he would be able to say, “Thy will be done.”

This dead man, however, felt that he had not committed the sins of childhood, but of manhood, and the thought of his sins made him tremble and shudder. He had certainly been a true believer, and a strict follower of religious forms. But, as he well knew, millions had wandered on the broad road that leads to destruction, and it would be not only their souls,