p. 328 | Hold On to the End

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 26, 1883

Hold On to the End.

In the battle of Gettysburg, a young color-bearer of the Sixteenth Regiment of Vermont Volunteers fell mortally wounded. Holding on firmly to his color-staff, he felt some one taking hold, and heard a voice saying, "Give us the flag." Death was already blinding his eyes, and he was unable to see who it was.

"Are you friends or enemies?" he asked.

"We are friends," they replied.

"Then, if you are friends," the dying boy continued, "let me hold the flag till I die." And uttering these words, he fell back and expired.

That was the impulse and act of a brave and true heart. The flag had been intrusted to his keeping. He could not and would not yield it to an enemy. He could not yield it to a friend, because he would cling to his trust to the end. His example, though but that of a boy, is one of the noblest and truest in history. Have you a trust committed to you? Yes. God has intrusted you with gifts and opportunities and duties. And Jesus says: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." Paul, just before his martyrdom, wrote to Timothy: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day."—Children's Friend.