p. 45 | My Mother by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 24, 1871

My Mother.

By James White

BEFORE me is the old family Bible, printed in 1822. I open to the family record and there read, in my father's good old-fashioned, plain handwriting, “Betsey White, born February 14, 1788.” Another has very recently added to that record—“Died, January 9, 1871. My mother lived nearly eighty-three years. My father yet lives, at the age of nearly eighty-six years. My parents at the time of my mother's death, had been married more than sixty-one years.”

But our very dear aged, godly mother sleeps. We have buried her in Oak Hill Cemetery, beside our noble Henry, who died in the love of Christ at the age of sixteen years, and our infant Herbert, torn from his mother’s arms when but three months old. These all rest in hope. That burial place is hallowed by precious memories of the past, and bright hopes of the future. These, so dear to us by the strongest natural ties, made doubly dear by the hope of the future life through Christ, will not always sleep. Death and the grave will not always triumph. No! “The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.”—JESUS. “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.”—PAUL. “For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise.”—PAUL. “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” Wake the sleeping just, and give us back our friends again, changed to glorious immortality.

There is nothing in death, alone considered, that is beautiful. No; the apostle speaks of it as man's last enemy, to be vanquished at the resurrection of the just. It enters our dwellings, and its shadows fall heavily about us. We follow our very dear friends to their graves, and strew this sad path as we go with our tears. Who that has the heart of man but feels then, and finds relief in pouring out tears of grief and mourning. Oh! the anguish of that last anxious, agonizing look, as the precious casket, by strong hands, is being lowered to the depths of its final resting-place! Christian, you may weep now. Jesus, at the grave of beloved Lazarus, found relief in tears. “Jesus wept.”

But there is hope and consolation in Christ. Triumphant faith and hope in the crucified, risen, ascended, and coming Lifegiver, bids us dry our tears, gird on the armor anew, and haste our steps to the final goal of applause and reward, where we shall greet lost friends again.

My mother was granddaughter of Dr. Sam'l Shepard, one of the first and ablest Baptist ministers of New England. By those who knew her moral excellences, and her consistent Christian life, words of commendation will be regarded unnecessary; while those who knew her not, could not fully appreciate them. During her very last sickness, she had her reason, and leaned fully on the staff of faith and hope quite down into the valley of death. When apparently unconscious of all else, the voice of prayer, or the name of Jesus, would awaken her fainting powers, and call forth a sweet response.

Mother, my dear mother! when a few more battles for truth, and for God, are fought, and the storms of life cease, and the shades of the night pass before the glorious light of the morning, when the Coming One shall descend to gather all the just to their final rest and reward, then, mother, by the grace of God, we will meet again.

JAMES WHITE.

Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 1871.