Passing Away | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 5, 1865

Passing Away.

THE following selection from the Gospel Herald will administer comfort to those sorrowing hearts which are being torn by the afflictive dispensation of death. It is true our friends are “passing away,” but not long will it be so. The Lifegiver will come—the death-march will cease—and God's dear ones now locked up in the cold embrace of the fell destroyer, will awake to life and immortality. Glory to God! brethren, “we're going home, to die no more.” G.

Every season of the year has its lessons and suggestions. Every season is adapted to particular moral wants, as well as physical. There are lessons in each which not one of the rest contains. The Fall has its lessons, its suggestions, its emblems, and they are found in neither Winter, Spring nor Summer. It hath a voice of its own, a language of its own, a power of its own. It is its own peculiar preacher, and what powerful sermons! Whence does it speak? From yon blue sky; from those hazy hills; from these drooping flowers; from these seared and rustling leaves; from those twigs and limbs bare once more of their green and beautiful foliage. “Passing away!” say they. Nothing was ever spoken more plainly, more emphatically. The minister says it with no more force when he administers before the coffined remains; when he reads a funeral service at the tomb; when the shoveled earth sends back its hollow echo from the grave.

These days are wonderfully emblematic of death. They warn us how short is the summer of life. They point to the seared forest and say, “We all do fade as a leaf.” They point to the withered grass and say, “Which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven.”

Passing away! The flowers are drooping; and leaves are falling; the days are dying; the nights are fleeting; suns are waning; weeks are gliding; years are passing; and graves are opening every where to receive our mortal dust. Death levies on mortal life; infancy drops in its mite, ripe manhood brings its tribute, old age withholds not its offerings—all, all, is scattered at the King's feet. All die. Death breathes in the zephyrs of Summer, and shouts in the blasts of Winter. Daily do men die—in all seasons do men die, for “Thou bringest all men to thy banquet,” and—

“All seasons are thine own, O Death!”

But we fear thee not, O King. A King died who lives forever more. He conquered thee. He led thee captive. He took thy sting away. He turned a great light into the tomb. He showed to us immortality. He wrought out for us eternal life. He has prepared for us a rest. A mansion he has built. He will come again. He will take us home; and thou dark King, lift up thy scythe, thrust in thy sickle, cut down our dust; but Jesus is mightier than thou. He is thy conqueror. He is King of kings, and Lord of lords.

It is well that men be admonished of their frailty; that every falling leaf, every withering blade of grass, every frail and falling flower, should remind him of that end which surely cometh, and that land whence no traveler returneth. So noble are the ends of life, that we should often meditate how few the hours to fulfill the ends.

Let all who have lived to see the Summer close—close forever with many a fellow-mortal—let all resolve to fortify their lives with stronger purposes, and to ornament them with a practice decked out with every jewel of the Christian graces.

Passing away! it is true. But it is blessed to pass away from life's crosses that we may in the final gathering receive Heaven's crown.