The Parting Hour by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 17, 1860

The Parting Hour

By Editor

The hour is coming—and it is a fearful and solemn hour, even to the wisest and best—the hour is coming when we must bid adieu to the scenes which please us, to the families we love, to the friends we esteem. Whether we think, or whether we think not, that body which is now warm and active with life, shall be cold and motionless with death. The countenance must be pale, the eyes must be closed, the voice must be silenced, the senses must be destroyed, the whole appearance must be changed by the remorseless hand of our last enemy. We may banish the remembrance of the weakness of our human nature; but our reluctance to reflect upon it, and our attempts to drive it from our recollection are in vain. We know that we are sentenced to die; and though we sometimes succeed in casting off for a season the conviction of this unwelcome truth, we can never entirely remove it. The reflection haunts us still; down with us at night, it awakens with us in the morning. The irrevocable doom has passed upon us, and too well do we know it—“Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.”—Townsend.

The above is indeed an unpleasant picture, and the “hour of parting,” an unwelcome anticipation; and this has been the unavoidable prospect before all the generations that have preceded us. Think what this must have been; and then think how glorious is the hope we cherish which relieves us from it. The separation of the grave we may have to experience, to be sure; but the blessed hope bids us look for the soon appearing of our coming King, through whose advent we shall be translated to heaven without seeing death, and enter upon the realities of eternal life without the pang of separation from the friends we love.—Ed.