At the close of another day we stood on the same hill-top. The sun was hanging low. The purpling shadows lengthened in the valley. The sun did not sink in glory tonight, but passed out of sight into a bank of dark and threatening clouds. The voices of the day were stilled. A solemn and foreboding hush seemed over all, and our spirits felt the general gloom. There was no afterglow. There was no resplendent painting of the sky. All was somber and gloomy; nature seemed to await what would come, in expectancy and awe. And as the darkness fell, we saw a gleam of lightning play across the distant cloud.
How like the sunsets of some lives were these two sunsets! In my mind, unfading while I live, are the memories of two life-sunsets. When but seven summers had passed over my head, my little sister and I were at a neighbor’s two or three miles from home. In the early twilight a horseman came galloping down the road bearing the fateful news that Mother was dying. Quickly placing me behind him on the horse and taking my little sister in his arms, he galloped away through the early night.
When we arrived at home, we found the house filled with neighbors. Upon her bed lay Mother with pallid face. Through the hours of the night we watched by her bedside. About three o’clock in the morning she asked them to sing that old song “Shall We Gather at the River?” With choking voices and tear-dimmed eyes the little band of neighbors sang the song. The eyes of the sufferer gazed stedfastly above. A heavenly light beamed forth from her countenance. A smile of joy was upon her face. Presently she called the sorrowing relatives one by one and bade them a last good-by. I fell upon my knees by her bedside and sobbed out my childish grief. She turned and looked fondly down upon me and, laying her hand upon my head, said, “Charlie, be a good boy and meet me in heaven.”
A little while she was quiet. Then her life’s sun sank to its rest. But the afterglow of that beautiful life still shines in that community. Circumstances later took me far away; but after sixteen years, I again stood upon the scene, and over and over during my stay the neighbors told me of her beautiful Christian life. Many a time during those years when I was tempted to do evil, I would behold that scene again, and those last words of my sainted mother would ring in my ears; they stood as a bulwark between my soul and evil.