p. 15 | The Message Came Too Late

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 9, 1908

The Message Came Too Late

“THE white men salute you!” shouted the West Coast natives, bending over their dying chief.

The old man, who had seen nearly a hundred summers, lifted his sightless eyes, and put out a trembling hand, whose skin had stiffened almost into parchment.

“He is too old,” exclaimed a favorite slave; “he can not see the strangers. The white men salute you,” he repeated, bending close to the deafened ear.

The old man moved, and, groping blindly, caught the hands of the newcomers.

“White men,” he said, “I don’t know the day that I have not heard about your power and your learning. Why did you not come sooner? You come now when these eyes are too blind to see you, these ears to hear. If you have any message, give it to the young men; you are too late for me.”

In the great wilderness of heathendom he died—died like the thirst-spent traveler in the desert, seeing far off the mirage of the city that he will never reach.—From “To Help to Heal.”