e is thy
victory?"

CHAPTER II.

Behold another scene in the shifting panorama of a life. In a poor and
humble chamber, on a mean couch, lay one dying. It is evening, and he
is alone. Fearfully sounds the gasping breath and the low moan,
terrible is the look cast upward in anguish. The hurrying tread of the
busy multitude is heard without, the sound of music and merry voices,
and trampling of steeds and rattling of wheels, and still he lies
there alone. He is aged and poor, and his kindred have forsaken him,
for the heathen creed taught nothing better than the leaving such as
he to struggle alone with the last enemy. The light of evening waxes
fainter and fainter, and now a step is heard on the threshold, and a
form enters, dimly seen in the fading twilight. It is the same we
beheld on the seashore hearkening to the words of eternal life. The
seed there sown germinated soon under the culture of that faithful
teacher. In that heart it found a good soil, and it sprung up, and
bore fruits manifold of faith and temperance and heavenly wisdom. That
divine word taught him to seek his suffering fellow mortals and
minister to their necessities. This was not his first visit to this
poor dying man, and he was welcomed even now with joy and gratitude.
How gently did he smooth the pillow, how tenderly support the sinking
frame, how kindly bathe the brow and wet the parched lips. Philosophy
had not taught him this. O, no! occupied in high meditation, she swept
past the couch of suffering humanity; "commercing with the skies," she
forgot that man's mission is to his fellow man, and that his life's
business is to do, not altogether to think. Christ had taught this
young disciple a new, a different and a better lesson; and he sat
there now, patient and humble beside the dying man, regarding him, not
as an atom, soon to be swept from an aimless existence, but as an
immortal spirit shaking off encumbering clay and preparing for a new
and glorious state of being. With his own hands the young Christian
lighted the little rude lamp which hung from the ceiling, and sat down
on a low stool by the bed-side, and drawing a manuscript from the
folds of his robe, read aloud the same hallowed words he had first
heard on the seashore in the still twilight of a summer evening long
past away. Sometimes he paused to add a word of comment or
explanation, and when he had finished reading, he kneeled down to
pray. He was famed even then in the school