offing, reclaimer of the fallen, nor without a plea of mercy for the depraved and criminal. No man better answered the large question of the Gospel, "Who is my neighbour ?" if only that he scarcely knew who was not his neighbour. Bonnie's death-bed seemed a harder pillow to all around him than to the dear head that lay there; for it was smoothed by the invisible hands of "friends that he had made of the mammon of unrighteousness." His Lord and theirs "made all his bed in his sickness, daily and gently strewing on it sweet leaves, fresh from the Tree of Life." He had his Lord's mortal baptism to be baptized with; but the same Spirit of the baptized One softly hovered over its waters, and His minister was there to cheer him. Bonnie loved and honoured his pastor in a sensible and manly way, neither magnifying him as a pontiff, nor degrading him as a pensioner. When the farewell offices had been ministered, Bonnie was asked "What dying testimony he left the Church ?" With his ingenuous shrinking from anything like parade, he besought them,-" Print me no flourish on tombstone or papers. If anything be uttered from the pulpit, the less the better, lest it seem preaching up a poor dead sinner, instead of the precious living Saviour. Tell the brethren I feel on entering the threshold of that world where John 'saw no temple therein,' as though the definite presentment of particular churches grew less distinct, and like the line of the horizon to a man ascending mountains, expanded every step into a wider, brighter Heaven. I am conscious of more sympathy with the 'no temple' atmosphere, than with any narrower segment of communion here. As the higher Elijah rose in his translation, things beneath him looked, by the light of his fiery chariot, smaller than they did below, and only the grand outlines of sea and shore, hill and valley, retained their old relations in the Promised Land; so the light of approaching Heaven discovers things. in far different proportions from those they once assumed. If we were more heavenly-minded, we should more uniformly view things through that loftier spiritual medium, which corrects our carnal estimates, as terrestrial charts are adjusted by celestial observations. Every tone of affectation, from its sounding brass to the tinkling cymbal, would be hushed and awed into the realities which make men real. There would be less mistakes. All things would be viewed in the light in which the God-man viewed them, although His generation sneered at the august simplicity which retreated from their hosannas to a cross, and reckoned 'all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,' at their intrinsic worth-'a crown of thorns! The pastor bid adieu, weeping as he whispered "Is it peace ?" And Bonnie Christie smiled as though of course it was, to one going home-perhaps the smile gently chid those gratuitous tears, or partly requited the love that shed them, and partly implied by its contrast his sighs were numbered with the days that drew them, and he looked pleased in the face of death to think it was so. There is no touching sight on earth so beautiful as the farewell smile of a dying saint which lingers on the peaceful features of the dead, as an infant stereotypes on its unconsciously parted lips, the last fond look of its mother, 'ere it fell asleep in her arms. Bonnie's last words, faintly uttered, were: "I cast my sins, my errors, and myself, on that plea of Golgotha'Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." " So Bonnie Christie died, as he had lived, a true man and no spy,"-loving and believing God and man. His memory was not gazetted a posthumous insolvent. Death, his last debt, was paid, like all he owed, as soon as it was due, leaving him none other save the infinite item of adoring love, which the redeemed, for ever paying, still for ever owe, to their Redeemer. The large charities of a generous life intercepted the reversionary ostentation of an eleemosynary testament, exempting even his obituary from the vanity of probate. His epitaph was like a general receipt for the bona fide account it closed. "Man looketh at the outward appearance; but the Lord looketh on the heart." (1 Sam. xvi. 7.) |