Mourning at the Last

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 22, 1872

Mourning at the Last.

“Just over my room, in the Theological Seminary,” said a writer in the Church Union, “roomed a poor skeptic who had ruined his soul by searching Gibbon, Hume, Strauss, and Renan, and writing for the Boston literary taste. He could confute the arguments of Butler, Edwards, and Paley, but alas! he could not answer the stifled utterances of his own guilty conscience. All night long he walked to and fro, like a caged lion, fretting to break the life-bars; but he dared not. At last, fearing that he might make way with himself, I rose, dressed, and went up to comfort him once more.”

“He paused as I entered, endeavored to conceal his haggard features, and pleaded ill-health for what could not be concealed—his inability to rest. Ah! I knew better; confronted him at once, and demanded to know where his philosophy had failed, and spoke the blessed name of Jesus of Nazareth whom he had mocked and denied, yea, crucified. He was in agony unutterable. I had torn off the thin mantle covering his humiliation. He was unmanned, and lost all his stimulated skepticism, making known to me at once the bare hypocrisy of his life. He believed, just as the devils did, and trembled. Every night for years he sought God in prayer, but in vain. His boastful unbelief had frozen stark and stiff all his emotions. He could not pray, and so was his life a hell, a falsehood, and that of the infidel hypocrite.”

“Next morning he moved away. Casually, I met him; but he always avoided me, and seemed always to remember that night’s conversation.

“Within one year, I was called at midnight to his dying bed. He lay motionless when I entered. Not a muscle could move, but his eyes looked despair unutterable. I tried to pray. It was futile. I could get no faith. So he died, professing what thousands preach—atheism; and believing, nevertheless, not unto salvation, just enough to lose his soul.”—Sel.