y to paint what after
all is only the image-picture of a dying hour. It is the easiest thing
to represent the dying Christian as a man who always sinks into the
grave full of hope, full of triumph, in the certain hope of a blessed
resurrection. Brethren, we must paint things in the sober colours of
truth; not as they might be supposed to be, but as they are. Often
that is only a picture. Either very few death-beds are Christian ones,
or else triumph is a very different thing from what the word generally
implies. Solemn, subdued, full of awe and full of solemnity, is the
dying hour generally of the holiest men: sometimes almost
darkness.--Rapture is a rare thing, except in books and scenes.

Let us understand what really is the victory over fear. It may be
rapture or it may not. All that depends very much on temperament; and
after all, the broken words of a dying man are a very poor index of
his real state before God. Rapturous hope has been granted to martyrs
in peculiar moments. It is on record of a minister of our own Church,
that his expectation of seeing God in Christ became so intense as his
last hour drew near, that his physician was compelled to bid him calm
his transports, because in so excited a state he could not die. A
strange unnatural energy was imparted to his muscular frame by his
nerves overstrung with triumph. But brethren, it fosters a dangerous
feeling to take cases like those as precedents. It leads to that most
terrible of all unrealities--the acting of a death-bed scene. A
Christian conqueror dies calmly. Brave men in battle do not boast that
they are not afraid. Courage is so natural to them that they are not
conscious they are doing anything out of the common way--Christian
bravery is a deep, calm thing, unconscious of itself. There are more
triumphant death-beds than we count, if we only remember this--true
fearlessness makes no parade.

Oh, it is not only in those passionate effusions in which the ancient
martyrs spoke sometimes of panting for the crushing of their limbs by
the lions in the amphitheatre, or of holding out their arms to embrace
the flames that were to curl round them--it is not then only that
Christ has stood by His servants, and made them more than
conquerors:--there may be something of earthly excitement in all that.
Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully--not a word
of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in t