p. 227 | No Anchorage

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jul 31, 1879

No Anchorage.

A GROUP of sorrowing friends surrounded the death-bed of a man who had been a prominent leader in an infidel circle. It was a dreary scene, for to the dying man his next step was emphatically a leap in the dark. The gloom and sadness pressed heavily on the sufferer, and it was a difficult task for his friends to say anything to him of a cheering character. At length one of them, as an appeal to what passes in such society as manliness, urged the dying man "to hold on." "I have no objection," was the reply, "to holding on, but will you tell me what to hold on by?"

A more embarrassing question it was impossible to conceive. A life spent in an effort to destroy the foundations of hope had left for him in that hour of solemn crisis no anchorage. Before him was a boundless ocean on which he must set sail; he had no chart, no compass, no rudder; he must drift out into the gloom hopelessly, for he felt he had nothing "to hold on by."

What a contrast to the death-bed of the humble Christian who can say, "I know in whom I have believed, and that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day"! With a firm grasp on the Rock of Ages he can look out on the waters of Jordan unfalteringly, knowing that One who has vanquished death has promised him that He will be with him in the valley of the shadow of death, will never leave him nor forsake him.