California Sketches Part 16

"What is the matter?"

"Mr. ----, the--preacher, has just left me. He told me that my soul cannot be saved unless I perform two miracles: I must, he said, think of nothing but religion, and be baptized by immersion. I am very weak, and cannot fully control my mental action--my thoughts will wander in spite of myself. As to being put under the water, that would be immediate death; it would bring on a hemorrhage of the lungs, and kill me."

He leaned his head on the table and panted for breath, his thin chest heaving. I answered:

"Mr.--is a good man, but narrow. He meant kindly in the foolish words he spoke to you. No man, sick or well, can so control the action of his mind as to force his thoughts wholly into one channel. I cannot do it, neither can any other man. G.o.d requires no such absurdity of you or anybody else. As to being immersed, that seems to be a physical impossibility, and he surely does not demand what is impossible. My friend, it really makes little difference what Mr.--says,or what I say, concerning this matter. What does G.o.d say? Let us see."

I took up the Bible, and he turned a face upon me expressing the most eager interest. The blessed Book seemed to open of itself to the very words that were wanted. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." "He knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust." "Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come to the waters."

Glancing at him as I read, I was struck with the intensity of his look as he drank in every word. A traveler dying of thirst in the desert could not clutch a cup of cold water more eagerly than he grasped these tender words of the pitying Father in heaven.

I read the words of Jesus: "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." "Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise east out."

"This is what G.o.d says to you, and these are the only conditions of acceptance. Nothing is said about any thing but the desire of your heart and the purpose of your soul. O my friend, these words are for you!"

The great truth flashed upon his mind, and flooded it with light. He bent his head and wept. We knelt and prayed together, and when we rose from our knees he said softly, as the tears stole, down his face:

"It is all right now--I see it clearly; I see it clearly!"

We quietly clasped hands, and sat in silent sympathy. There was no need for any words from me; G.o.d had spoken, and that was enough. Our hearts were singing together the song without words.

"You have found peace at the cross--let nothing disturb it," I said, as he pressed my hand at the door as we left.

It never was disturbed. The days that had dragged so wearily and anxiously during the long, long months, were now full of brightness. A subdued joy shone in his face, and his voice was low and tender as he spoke of the blessed change that had pa.s.sed upon him. The Book whose words had been light and life to him was often in his hand, or lay open on the little table in his room. He never lost his hold upon the great truth he had grasped, nor abated in the fullness of his joy. I was with him the night he died. He knew the end was at hand, and the thought filled him with solemn joy. His eyes kindled, and his wasted features fairly blazed with rapture as he said, holding my hand with both of his:

"I am glad it will all soon, be over. My peace has been unbroken since that morning when G.o.d sent you to me. I feel a strange, solemn joy a the thought that I shall soon know all."

Before daybreak the great mystery was disclosed to him, and as he lay in his coffin next day, the smile that lingered on his lips suggested the thought that he had caught a hint of the secret while yet in the body.

Among the casual hearers that now and then dropped in to hear a sermon in Sonora, in the early days of my ministry there, was a man who interested me particularly. He was at that time editing one of the papers of the town, which sparkled with the flashes of his versatile genius. He was a true Bohemian, who had seen many countries, and knew life in almost all its phases. He had written a book of adventure which found many readers and admirers. An avowed skeptic, he was yet respectful in his allusions to sacred things, and I am sure his editorial notices of the pulpit efforts of a certain young preacher who had much to learn were more than just. He was a brilliant talker, with a vein of enthusiasm that was very delightful. His spirit was generous and frank, and I never heard from his lips an unkind word concerning any human being. Even his partisan editorials were free from the least tinge of asperity--and this is a supreme test of a sweet and courteous nature. In our talks he studiously evaded the one subject most interesting to me. With gentle and delicate skill he parried all my attempts to introduce the subject of religion in our conversations.

"I can't agree with you on that subject, and we will let it pa.s.s" he would say, with a smile, and then he would start some other topic, and rattle on delightfully in his easy, rapid way.

He could not stay long at a place, being a confirmed wanderer. He left Sonora, and I lost sight of him. Retaining. a very kindly feeling for this gentle-spirited and pleasant adventurer, I was loth thus to lose all trace of him. Meeting a friend one day, on J Street, in the city of Sacramento, he said:

"Your old friend D--is at the Golden Eagle hotel. You ought to go and see him."

I went at once. Ascending to the third story, I found his room, and, knocking at the door, a feeble voice bade me enter. I was shocked at the spectacle that met my gaze. Propped in an armchair in the middle of the room, wasted to a skeleton, and of a ghastly pallor, sat the unhappy man. His eyes gleamed with an unnatural brightness, and his features wore a look of intense suffering.

"You have come too late, sir," he said, before I had time to say a word.

"You can do me no good now. I have been sitting in this chair three weeks. I could not live a minute in any other position, h.e.l.l could not be worse than the tortures I have suffered! I thank you for coming to see me, but you can do me no good--none, none!"

He paused, panting for breath; and then he continued, in a soliloquizing way:

"I played the fool, making a joke of what was no joking matter. It is too late. I can neither think nor pray, if praying would do any good. I can only suffer, suffer, suffer!"

The painful interview soon ended. To every cheerful or hopeful suggestion which I made he gave but the one reply:

"Too late!"

The unspeakable anguish of his look, as his eyes followed me to the door, haunted me for many a day, and the echo of his words, "Too late!"

lingered sadly upon my ear. When I saw the announcement of his death, a few days afterward, I asked myself the solemn question, Whether I had dealt faithfully with this lighthearted, gifted man when he was within my reach. His last rook is before me now, as I pencil these lines.

"John A--is dying over on the Portrero, and his family wants you to go over and see him."

It was while I was pastor in San Francisco. A--was a member of my Church, and lived on what was called the Portrero, in the southern part of the city, beyond the Long Bridge. It was after night when I reached the little cottage on the slope above the bay.

"He is dying and delirious," said a member of the family, as I entered the room where the sick man lay. His wife, a woman of peculiar traits and great religious fervor, and a large number of children and grandchildren, were gathered in the dying man's chamber and the adjoining rooms. The sick man--a man of large and powerful frame--was restlessly tossing and roving his limbs, muttering incoherent words, with now and then a burst of uncanny laughter. When shaken, he would open his eyes for an instant, make some meaningless e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, and then they would close again. The wife was very anxious that he should have a lucid interval while I was there.

"O I cannot bear to have him die without a word of farewell and comfort!" she said, weeping.

The hours wore on, and the dying man's pulse showed that he was sinking steadily. Still he lay unconscious, moaning and gibbering, tossing from side to side as far as his failing strength permitted. His wife would stand and gaze at him a few moments, and then walk the floor in agony.

"He can't last much longer," said a visitor, who felt his pulse and found it almost gone, while his breathing became more labored. We waited in silence. A thought seemed to strike the wife. Without saying a word, she climbed upon the bed, took her dying husband's head upon her lap, and, bending close above his face, began to sing. It was a melody I had never heard before--low, and sweet, and quaint. The effect was weird and thrilling as the notes fell tremulous from the singer's lips in the hush of that dead hour of the night. Presently the dying man became more quiet, and before the song was finished he opened his eyes as a smile swept over his face, and as his glance fell on me I saw that he knew me.

He called my name, and looked up in the face that bent above his own, and kissed it.

"Thank G.o.d!" his wife exclaimed, her hot tears falling on his face, that wore a look of strange serenity. Then she half whispered to me, her face beaming with a softened light:

"That old song was one we used to sing together when we were first married in Baltimore."

On the stream of music and memory he had floated back to consciousness, called by the love whose instinct is deeper and truer than all the science and philosophy in the world.

At dawn he died, his mind clear, and the voice of prayer in his ears, and a look of rapture in his face.

Dan W--, whom I had known in the mines in the early days, had come to San Jose about the time my pastorate in the place began. He kept a meat-market, and was a most genial, accommodating, and good-natured fellow. Everybody liked him, and he seemed to like everybody. His animal spirits were unfailing, and his face never revealed the least trace of worry or care. He "took things easy," and never quarreled with his luck.

Such men are always popular, and Dan was a general favorite, as the generous and honest fellow deserved to be. Hearing that he was very sick, I went to see him. I found him very low, but he greeted me with a smile.

"How are you today, Dan?" I asked, in the offhand way of the old times.

"It is all up with me, I guess," he replied, pausing to get breath between the words; "the doctor says I can't get out of this--I must leave in a day or two."

He spoke in a matter-of-fact way, indicating that he intended to take death, as he had taken life, easy.

"How do you feel about changing worlds, my old friend?"

"I have no say in the matter. I have got to go, and that is all there is of it."

That was all I ever got out of him. He told me he had not been to church for ten years, as "it was not in his line." He did not understand matters of that sort, he said, as his business was running a meat-market. He intended no disrespect to me or to sacred things--this was his way of putting the matter in his simple-heartedness.

"Shall I kneel here and pray with you?" I asked.

"No; you needn't take the trouble, parson," he said, gently; "you see I've got to go, and that's all there is of it. I don't understand that sort of thing--it's not in my, line, you see. I've been in the meat business."

"Excuse me, my old friend, if I ask if you do not, as a dying man, have some thoughts about G.o.d and eternity?"