Who'll Wake Me? by Bene-Berak

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 22, 1883

"Who'll Wake Me?"

By Bene-Berak

A LITTLE girl in San Francisco was recently run over by a street car. When removed, it was found that one of her limbs was nearly severed from the body, besides other serious injuries. She was carried to the hospital, and the disjointed member taken off. The little girl bore the operation remarkably well. As there appeared to be little chance for her recovery, the surgeons concluded to let the other limb, also badly damaged, remain. The mother was with the child immediately, and did for her all that a mother could do. The little one was under the influence of anodynes most of the time, and of course slept a great deal. The day following the accident, as she was dropping off, she exclaimed, "I'm going to sleep." Then noticing the temporary absence of her mother, she added, "but who'll wake me." It turned out to be her last sleep—a sleep that will finally lock in its embrace all the living.

The query of this little child was a natural one. On a broad sense, it is the one great question of life. Upon the return of the dawn, we go about our daily duties and pleasures until it is time to retire. We shut our eyes to sleep with no anxiety but what they will open when we have had the needed rest. This is confidence, we have tried the experiment, and it has never failed; therefore we believe when resigning ourselves to sleep that we shall wake again. But at the close of life's fitful fever, when we fear that the sleep of death may be stealing over us, we want to know whether we shall ever awake, who it is that will wake us, and where we will be, and what will be our condition when we awake. Thousands have reached that point in their history, when they would give all the world, if they had it to give, to have these queries satisfactorily answered.

This is purely a matter of faith. None of us have had any ocular demonstration that there is another world. From all we can see, our journey leads directly to the grave, and the life that we now live apparently ends there. With some of us the distance to the grave is not long. With all, it becomes shorter with every sun. A man's days are threescore years and ten, but the average is not half that. Life is often said to be a mystery, and so it is. The only certainties about it are that it has a beginning and an end. We know that we exist, and we know that we shall cease to exist. We have made graves for others, and we often visit them in kind remembrance of the one gone before. Where our grave will be, we know not, but the place and date of occupation are fixed, and every beat of the pulse is a step to the locality and hour.

"Who'll wake me?" We can descend into the dark and cold ground with resignation, if we are assured that some one will wake us. Everybody has a trace of this faith—life would be intolerable if we were not permitted to entertain it. Better that the belief should be a delusion, than that it should not exist. It helps to soften many of the rugged places of this life to believe that a better one awaits us. It eases many a pain, dries many a tear, lightens many a burden, illumines many a dark passage, to know that there is a world where there are no pains, "or tears," or burdens. Take away that belief, and unselfish motives and heroic deeds vanish. We are worse than the beasts that perish. For my part, I must believe that the fabric of human life was constructed for some nobler end than can be possibly wrought out in the brief period of existence between the cradle and the grave. Any other view implies a great waste of wisdom, energy, and material. The little girl's query has been answered: We shall all awake from our last sleep, "some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." How will you awake?—Bene-Berak.