I would inform the brethren of the death of our beloved brother John C. Below of this place. He died of palsy, on the 9th inst., in the seventieth year of his age, leaving a widow and an only child, a daughter, to mourn his loss, but not as those who have no hope. Sister Below has an only surviving son by a former husband.
Bro. Below was a Prussian by birth, and brought up in the Lutheran church. The former part of his life was spent upon the seas. Leaving that occupation, he bought a farm, married a Sabbath-keeper, and for a few years, two Sabbaths were observed in the family. A little more than three years ago he embraced the Sabbath under the preaching of the third angel's message, and soon after was baptized and united with the little church in this place. Though not, in word and in tongue, of so strong faith and ardent zeal as some, yet he was constant in his attendance at our meetings, faithful in the discharge of his duties there, and free in the use of means to publish abroad the truth. While he went in and out among us, for some time, his failing powers, of body and of mind, admonished him that his stay with us was short, and he frequently expressed this presentiment together with his earnest desire that he might be ready. We trust that God heard his prayers, and that he sleeps in Jesus.
“Asleep in Jesus! Blessed sleep, From which none ever wake to weep.”