I HAVE FINISHED MY COURSE.
By P. Giddings
"I AM eighty years old to-day. I have exceeded the allotted span, threescore years and ten, by ten years. Much of it has been labor and sorrow. A few moments more and all will have passed, and I shall be gone—gone the way of all the earth." One of God's aged servants thus with solemn pathos began his address to those whom kinship had made most dear, who had gathered around his couch. "I remember," he continues, "it seems as but yesterday, though sixty years ago, when I reached that point of my school life justifying that happy and ambitiously toiled-for exclamation, 'I have finished my course!' I felt like a man unskilled in the art of swimming, who had plunged from one shore of a river determined to reach the other; and with all the inabilities and obstacles that antagonized my efforts I reached it—much exercised but the happier for it. I was a graduate, and no monarch was prouder of his title than I of mine. The scene presents itself vividly to my mind's eye: A group of forty students, all aglow with evident but unspeakable ecstasy, sit on a platform before an admiring assembly. There are floral adornments, arranged with artistic skill, all around the stand and over our heads. In our hands are wreaths fragrant and beautiful. Laudatory words are eloquently spoken to us, and with a happy satisfaction we receive our diplomas. "The orchestra starts a strain—and, oh, how I seem to hear the echo swiftly coming back from that distant occasion! The music vibrates from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, and my whole being, already attuned, answered to the sweet concert of sounds. I thought that I was happy that night, but to-night"—and he paused for a moment—"I am too happy for words. "Yes, I have finished my course, but the diploma is not to be a perishable parchment, nor the laurels, fading flowers, but a golden crown bejeweled with precious stones, brilliant forever and ever. Ah, the echoes of yonder days are hushed, for even now methinks I hear harpers harping with their golden instruments music which no language on earth can describe!" His face lighted up with a rapture of joy. For a while he seemed lost to all earthly surroundings. He gazed steadfastly upwards. His lips parted, and he smiled as he murmured: "Oh, the joys that await me there! In his presence there is fullness of joy!" Recalling his attention to those around him, he continued: "This world is a great schoolhouse. Hard are the lessons, difficult the problems. Disappointments, trials, vexations, are some of the disciplinarians under whom you have to be tutored. Thank God I have learned my lessons. Many are the errors I made, but with a patience that bespoke a heart of unfailing love, my Teacher, Christ, bore and forebore until I had mastered the difficulty. It was inward pride sometimes, it was outward misconduct at others, but over the misdone or undone task, he gently led me back, and in his grace and with his help I mastered. " 'They shall be all taught of God.' Let him be your Teacher. Let duty, under whatever form it comes, be your lesson, and so when life's tasks are over, and you arrive at this point whereat, in the presence of God"—and his voice broke, and the dam of their tears broke through, and streams coursed down the cheeks of all. "Let us not cry," he resumed, "this a solemn but a glad occasion. I was saying, when you arrived at this point, 'having studied to show yourselves approved of God,' you too may say, 'I have finished my course.'" "And now farewell, my kinsfolk, farewell. It is needless on this my death bed to lecture. I have endeavored to do so, by the help of God, by my life's actions, and this occasion closes and ratifies it all. I have endeavored to write my life's essay by a godly life. It is done, thank God, and now I am just dotting the full stop with my death. God has helped me to show others—and he will show you—how a Christian might live, and now I die—and thus, too, may you—to show how a Christian dies. In it all to him be the praise. Farewell, farewell. 'O death, where is thy sting?' he triumphantly exclaimed. 'I have finished my course; . . . henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.'" Then, raising his head to heaven, he chanted in softest melody the tune "Dimittis,"—"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace," and, bowing his head, he whispered sweetly, "Good-night!" and fell asleep. May the writer and reader so order their daily walk and conversation as to have their prayer answered: "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his."