peril, as on shipboard when a multitude are suddenly
confronted with death, an irresistible impulse presses men to their
knees. At the communion table, when the bread and the wine are
circulating in silence, every thoughtful person is inevitably occupied
with prayer. But on a death-bed it is more in its place than anywhere
else. Then we are perforce parting with all that is earthly--with
relatives and friends, with business and property, with the comforts of
home and the face of the earth. How natural to lay hold of what alone
we can keep hold of; and this is what prayer does; for it lays hold of
God.

It is so natural to pray then that prayer might be supposed to be an
invariable element of the last scenes. But it is not always. A
death-bed without God is an awful sight; yet it does occur. The
currents of the mind may be flowing so powerfully earthward that even
then they cannot be diverted. There are even death-beds where the
thought of God is a terror which the dying man keeps away; and
sometimes his friends assist him to keep it away, suffering none to be
seen and nothing to be said that could call God to mind. Natural as
prayer is, it is only so to those who have learned to pray before. It
had long been to Jesus the language of life. He had prayed without
ceasing--on the mountain-top and in the busy haunts of men, by Himself
and in company with others--and it was only the bias of the life
asserting itself in death when, as He breathed His last, He turned to
God.

If, then, we would desire our last words to be words of prayer, we
should commence to pray at once. If the face of God is to shine on our
death-bed, we must now acquaint ourselves with Him and be at peace.
If, as we look upon the dying Christ or on the dying saints, we say,
"Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like
his," then we must begin now to live the life of the righteous and to
practise its gracious habits.

II.

The last word of the dying Saviour was a quotation from Scripture.

This was not the first time our Lord quoted Scripture on the cross: His
great cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" was likewise
borrowed from the Old Testament, and it is possible that there is
Scriptural allusion in others of the Seven Words.

If prayer is natural to the lips of the dying, so is Scripture. For
different seasons and for different uses there is special suitability
in different languages and litera