Happiness in Death

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 18, 1871

Happiness in Death.

THE Rev. William Jay, in a sermon on the requisites for a happy death, says: “It requires that you should obtain and preserve the evidences of pardon; without these you cannot be fearless and tranquil in the near views of eternity, since ‘after death is the Judgment.’ It requires you to keep a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man. Is he in a condition to die who has lived in the practice of some known sin, and in the omission of some known duty? Is he in a condition to die who has worn the mask of hypocrisy, which will now drop off and expose him in his true character? Is he in condition to die who, by artifice, unfair dealing, grinding the faces of the poor, has amassed gain which will dishonor him if restored, and damn him if retained?

“It requires us to live in the exercise of brotherly kindness and charity. Of all we do for him, nothing pleases him more than this; this we know he will acknowledge in the day of Judgment, and why not in the day of death? ‘Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.’ ‘The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing; thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.’ Many are praying for him; the widows and the fatherless cry, and their cry entereth ‘the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.’

“It requires an attention to religion in your families. I pity that father who will be surrounded when he dies, with children whose minds he never informed, whose disposition he never curbed, whose manners he never guarded; who sees one an infidel, another a profligate, and all irreligious.

“I know that you are not answerable for the conversion of your offspring, but you are responsible for the use of all proper means. And if these have been neglected, you will plant your dying pillow with thorns; whereas, if you have seriously and perseveringly attended to them, your dying repose shall not be disturbed by want of success; but you shall be able to say, ‘Although my house be not so with God, yet hath he made me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure; for this is all my salvation and all my desire, although he make it not to grow.’

“Through the mercy of God, and the grace of his dear Son, may we be enabled to live in the discharge of duty, that our dying beds shall feel soft as downy pillows are.”—Sel.