Page:Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray.djvu/47

Rh agony, my mother kneeling upon the opposite side; my brothers and sisters forming a circle which surrounded it, while the domestics kneeled near us. I prayed, I wept, I audibly sobbed: while my, only not divine, father, was in ecstacy. When I had finished, "Now, O Lord," he exclaimed, "let thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen, for my ears have heard, for my heart has felt, thy salvation. Come near me, my darling boy." Instantly I ran, and again I kneeled by his bedside; he drew my head to his bosom, he wept over me, but his tears were tears of transport, when, laying his dying hand upon my head, he thus fervently supplicated: "O thou, Almighty God, who hath thus blessed, greatly blessed thy poor servant: Thou who hast been my God, and my guide, even unto death, bless, oh! bless this son, with whom thou hast blessed thy feeble supplicant: Give him thy supporting presence through life, direct him in the way he should go, and never leave him, nor forsake him: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, thou covenant-keeping God, bless, bless, O! bless this lad—" Here his heart swelled too big for utterance; after a few moments, recovering himself a little, he mildly requested me to place him properly in his bed. I was beyond measure shocked to see what a skeleton he had become, his bones in many places through his skin. It was my wish to tarry with him through the night, but I could not obtain permission. "Go, my dear son," said he, "go to rest, and the God of your fathers be ever with you." This was the last time I ever heard his voice; before the morning dawned, I was summoned to attend not a dying, but a deceased parent, whose value, until that agonizing moment, I had never sufficiently appreciated. My mother continued by his bedside, overwhelmed by sorrow; the slumbers of my father were sweet, calm, and unbroken, until near midnight, when she perceived he was awake, and believing him to be speaking, she inclined her ear to his lips, and heard him say, while his heart, his full heart, seemed nearly bursting: "The souls of believers are at their death made perfectly holy, and do immediately pass into glory; but their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection." After a pause, he resumed: "At the resurrection, they shall be openly acknowledged, and acquitted in the day of judgment, and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoyment of God through eternity: Blessed, perfectly bless—." Blessed he would have said, but he breathed no more. When I approached the bed of death, I beheld the remains of the departed saint, precisely in the position in which a few hours before I