At length the chaplain, seeing that her soul was near its dread passage into the eternal future, said:
"I am sorry, my friend, to find you so very ill. You are soon to die."
"Yes."
"It is a fearful thing to die; are you not afraid?"
"No."
"But to go into the presence of God, our Judge, is a most solemn change."
"Yes."
"And are you not afraid?"
"No."
The preacher was confounded. The short answers, almost cold, without emotion, the glazed eye, the rigid countenance, caused him to doubt whether he had to contend with ignorance or insensibility. Anxious to rouse some feeling, if possible, to startle into some attention, as a physician applies the probe, he pushed severe declarations of certain judgment and the danger of impenitence, reminded her that Christ, the Saviour of the beileving, will be the Avenger of sin, and that "there is no work or device in the grave," but "as the tree falls, so it must lie." The tearless eye unwinkingly gazed on him, and no shrinking followed his keen surgery.
"Madam, you are going before God, and do you not fear?"
A faint smile stole struggling through her thin features, and a light, like a star twinkling under a deep shadow, was seen far within her eye, and pointing with her finger upward, she said, in a firm, low tone:
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."
The chaplain bowed his head on the pillow and wept thanks. Here was no ignorant or callous soul, but a child of God, whose perfect love had cast out fear.
"Yes, Christian soul, you are not afraid of evil tidings; your heart is fixed, trusting in Him who went this way before you. Fear no evil; His rod and His staff, they will comfort you."
"Amen! blessed be His name," replied the dying believer. "It is true. I know in whom I have believed, and that He is able to
