CALLED HOME.
We omit our usual report
of Canal Street Mission from the pen of our Christian brother, J.W. Wells, to
give place to an account of the funeral services of his aged mother, whose
death occurred on the 19th ult.
In the nature of
existing circumstances Mr. Wells felt called upon to deliver the funeral sermon
himself, and his remarks, in their simple faith and fervent piety, were so
blessed to those present that we have requested his permission to publish them
for the benefit of our readers.
The services were held
in the Mission Hall on Canal street, where the loving work of extending the
Gospel invitation to fallen, erring souls is carried on every evening by
Brother Wells and his young brave Christian wife; and many present at the
funeral were those who had been rescued, by their prayerful efforts, from a
life of sin.
I wish that it were
possible to give my readers a due impression of the Heaven-born peace which
brooded over us that afternoon. No awful gloom, no weighty sense of the
mournfulness and solemnity of the occasion; but, instead, it seemed that the
friends of the dear departed one, in their God-given faith, were able to
rejoice abundantly in the victorious hope which had conquered the bitterness of
their human sorrow. The general sentiment of those who looked upon the still,
sweet face of the dead, so eloquently in its expression of wondrous peace, is
most fitly expressed by these words which occurred in the remarks of Rev. Mr.
Marshall, during the course of the service: “This is not a day of mourning;
for, though tears may fall, they are tears of affection, such as love delights
to shed. Those sweet cords that bound us to her on earth are not served; they
are only extended. God has parted the cloud and beckoned the loved one away,
but these cords of love reach up to the Father’s Throne today.”
As we have not space to
speak more in detail of other precious portions of this sweet season, we will
simply give the names of those clergymen who kindly officiated the services
besides Rev. Wm. Reed, of Calvary Church, and Rev. Henry Ward, of East Side
Church, this city, there were present Rev. Mr. Robinson, of East Hamburgh,
N.Y.., and Rev. Thos. Marshall, of St. Louis, Mo.
After reading of
Scripture, singing and prayer, Brother Wells took his place reverently near the
head of the open casket, and in tones of loving emotion spoke as follows:
“In the place where the
tree faileth, there it shall be.”-Ecclesiastes xi:3.
I am aware of the
general feeling about mourners officiating in any way on occasions of this
kind; and my only reason for violating this general sentiment is that my dear
mother was almost an entire stranger in your midst-a stranger in her own native
State after years of earthly wanderings; and I felt that while others would
gladly speak of her, they could not for want of knowledge; and, aside from this
consideration, there is no consideration, there is no occasion of sorrow-as the
world counts sorrow-here today, while there may be of grief; for the day of
one’s death, we read in God’s word, is better than the day of our birth. This
applies especially to those whose lives have given evidence of a preparation
for this change. I have always held that I should rejoice in the day of
mother’s death, for earth had no resting-place for her.
Born in a storm, she
rode upon the waves, tossed hither and yon at their mercy, and yet, in the
wildest hurricane of human distress that has been allowed to fall upon her from
earliest years, there has always come, over the waves and through the roar, the
shout of victory, as one of her favorite hymns would indicate.
“Though tribulation deep
The way to glory is;
This stormy course I keep
On these tempestuous seas.
By waves and winds I’m tossed and driven,
Freighted with grace and bound to heaven.
“Sometimes temptations blow
A dreadful hurricane,
As high the waters flow,
And o’er my sides break in;
But still my little shop outbraves
The blustering winds and surging waves.
“When I, in my distress,
My anchor, hope, can cast
Within the promises,
It holds my vessel fast.
Safely she ten at anchor rides,
Midst storm blasts and surging tides.”
And shall I, in this
last hour, do contrary to her life-wish and testimony? While Heaven is tuning
its harps of gladness to meet the tempest-tossed one, shall I bewail? No; but
rather let me sing with her that old familiar hymn that in my boyhood days she
sang:
“What’s this steals, that steals upon my frame-
Is it death? Is it death?
That soon will quench, will quench this vital flame-
Is it death? Is it death?
If this be death, I soon shall be
From every sin and sorrow free;
I shall the King of Glory see-
All is well. All is well.
“Weep not, my friends, my friends, weep not for me-
All is well. All is well.
There’s not a cloud that doth arise
To hide my Saviour from my eyes;
I soon shall mount, shall mount the upper skies-
All is well. All is well.
* * * *
“Hail! Hail! All hail, all hail, ye blood-washed
throng!
All is well. All is well.
Saved, saved by grace, by grace alone I’m saved-
All is well. All is well.”
St. Paul says that “Ye
[the disciples of death’s conqueror] sorrow not even as others which have no
hope,” and I am satisfied her hope was that which anchored within the veil. I
do not take this place to flatter the dead, even though she be my own dear
mother, for this fashion of whitewashing guilt and shame, so common in this
nineteenth century, I abominate; but when we concluded to come here to live and
work, we included every possible contingency-sickness, want, suffering and
death, and that in it all, and through it all, whether in life or in death, we
should glorify God.
My dear mother’s voice
has been heard in feebleness many times in this very place; yea, right here she
first took up her abode alone with me, before I had a partner, and before the
partition in the hail was taken out, and her own wish and desire was to die on
the battle-field.
How many times she has
said gently to me, “Are you not going to let that man stay all night?” when I
had decided otherwise, and “Are you not going to give that one another trial?”
and in this one of her life’s bitter
sorrows found a sequel, for she had a wondering, suffering boy. Today the tree
falls, and I conclude that as it has been leaning to God-ward for seventy years
and more, that today she falls into the arms of Jesus.
It was with this as the
main though in my mind, and because I knew her life-wish to be to glorify God
in life or death, and to leave a testimony behind of His power to save, that I
chose on this occasion to speak. The Psalmist says, “Therefore will not we
fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the
midst of the sea.” (Psa. xici: 2.) I have preached many times from the text
“Great peace have they which Thy law, and nothing
shall offend them” (Psa cxix: 165), and shall this loving providence disturb or
confound? We lose our remembrance of the chilly, dark nigh, with its fitful
dreams and vague phantoms when the morning dawns in its warmth and brightness.
Is it not morning now with my precious mother?
Forty-four years ago the
seventeenth day of May, after a long and tedious journey by water and by land,
my father and mother landed in the then ‘far West,” in the Territory of Iowa;
and there, on that day, upon the banks of the beautiful Des Moines River, at a
place then called “Sweet Home,” they dedicated their new forest home to the
Lord. Her life commenced near Saratga Springs, N.Y., seventy-two years ago.
At Cicero, N.Y., under
the preaching of a Mr. Blake, at the age of eleven years, mother found Christ.
She was under conviction fro some time, and finally went to get her grandmother
to pray for her, who at first put off the child, but she came back again, and the
grandmother yielded to the request, and mother sought and found the Saviour.
She joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, and, whenever practicable, has
sustained that revelation nearly all these years; and may we not say that
today, after all her weary journeyings upon the banks of the river of life, she
has reached her “Home, sweet home.” She worshiped God in the hills and
streams, in flowers and birds. Of the latter we have a few canaries and robins,
and she had, in her nights of sleeplessness, taught them to talk to her; and
the night following her death, about two o’clock, one of them called for her,
but there was no response. She had ceased to commune with God’s creatures to
hold converse with God and the angles.
And do you ask if I have
no regrets?
None that she is at home. But, oh! I might
have loved her more, and eased many a burden in life (and feeling that is but
human). I might have made it easier for her in the last days. But if she was to
be one “chosen in the furnace of affliction” (Isa. xlviii: 10), one who had
washed her robes white in the blood of the Lamb, and had come up out of great
tribulation-if this had been her prayer, why should I rob her of this coveted
boon? I find marked in her old hymn-book,
“Must I be carried to
the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
Whilst others fought to win the prize,
And sailed through bloody seas?”
While I was in Minnesota
evangelizing, in 1875, mother wrote for money, saying they were in need. I
wrote a letter of sadness in sympathy for her, saying, I will stop preaching if
you think best.” She wrote back, “No, my son, go on; do not stop for anything;
the Lord will not make our burden to heavy to bear.” She always stood in the in
the breach where the enemy hurled his heaviest battalions.
Do you wonder I craved
this last opportunity to speak of her? I owe everything, under God, to my
mother. The half has not been told. You have seen by the wreck, but the tattered
sail and the broken mast. She was a woman! she was a mother! she was a child of
God and an heir of salvation; and to Jesus our King be al the glory of her life, her love and her unswerving
faith and devotion.
Sinner, would you have
your tree fall as has fallen this one today? Then let your will and affections, your
life and your talents be given to God-that as the tree leans it may fall, for
God has said it. “In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.”
***
Before they call I will answer. –Isa.
lxv:24.
All true prayer begins
with God. He convinces us of the need of blessings, awakens a desire in our
souls to enjoy them, and stirs us up to seek them. Before the Lord bestows His
favors upon us, He generally disposes us to seek them at His hands. He is ever
ready to bless us, and is more ready to hear than we are to pray: therefore He
says, “Before they call I will answer.” Prayer shall be an anticipated; and the
answer shall be on the road sometimes before the petition ascends from our
hearts. How great must the Lord’s love to His people! Grater encouragement He could not give us, and less He would not. Let us therefore make our
requests known unto Him. He is the prayer-hearing God, and He is always “night
unto all that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. He will
fulfill the desire of them that fear Him; He also will hear their cry and will
save them.”
-Rev. James Smith.
