I HAVE THE COMFORTER.
IN 1862, just after the terrible battle at Corinth, Miss., I visited the hospitals in that place. The havoc had been fearful on both sides, and the wounded of the two armies crowded every ward.
Going into a hospital known as the College Building one day, and passing from cot to cot, I came to a young man who looked very pale and weak. I asked,—
“Are you sick or wounded?”
He answered, “I am severely wounded;” and seeing the look of sympathy on my face, he went on to tell me all about it.
It was a long, sad story that I need not repeat here.
He had fallen in the front of the battle-line, had been taken prisoner, and had lain out all the night long among the dead; but he said cheerfully, “When ‘our boys’ found me, they took me up tenderly and brought me here, and now I am doing well.”
But I felt that he was not doing well, that hewas on the verge of the grave, and that I must speak to him of the future. He went on to tell me of his home,—of a mother and sister and two little brothers in Benton County, Iowa, and added,—
“When I get well enough, I hope they will give me a furlough and let me go home.”
I said tenderly, “I hope you will get well; but how will it be if you should not? Are you ready to die?”
I never shall forget his answer; it has been ringing through my soul all these years. It was as though he was transfigured before me; there came into his face such light and joy, as, laying his hand on his heart, he said, “I have the Comforter!” What volumes in that sentence! I did not need to ask him to what denomination he belonged, or when or where he had found the pearl of great price. It was enough for me to know that he had the Blessed Comforter which Jesus promised to his disciples.
But he went on talking sweetly of Christ and heaven, and the power of Christ to keep. “Religion,” he said, “has kept me through all the temptations of camp-life, and now I am ready toliveor todie. If the Master sees that it is best that I should go now, it will be as near heaven from Corinth as it would be from Iowa.”
It was evening time, and I went my way. The next morning I was early at that hospital, andfirst of all went to look after him, but I found his place vacant.
I said to the ward-master, “Where is the young man who was lying here by this post?”
He answered, “He is dead.”
Oh, how his words went to my heart!
“Where have you laid him?” I asked.
He led the way out into the back yard, and there, side by side, stood the seven cot bedsteads that held the seven dead men that had been carried out the night before. He pointed out his cot, and left me alone with the dead. The bed-spreads were drawn up over their faces, and that was all that was between the dead faces and the sky.
I drew down the bedspread to look upon his face. I never can express the emotions of that moment. My heart was thrilled; for there upon the dead soldier’s face was the very same look of joy and peace that was on his face when he said, “I have the Comforter,” and I knew that the Comforter had been with him till the last. I wrote to his mother, telling her the sad story of his sufferings, and the sweet, sweet story of his Christian triumph.
After a while an answer came back to me. She did not know that he was wounded or dead until she received my letter.
His death was a heavy blow; but she rose in Christian triumph above her great sorrow, and in closing her letter said,—
“My son may not come back to me, but I shall go to him, and it is just as near heaven from Iowa as it was from Corinth; andthe same Comforter that comforted my son when wounded and dying among strangers comforts me now.”
What a glorious Christianity we have! A religion that can keep under the sorest trials, that can comfort in the deepest agonies, and that can give joy and peace in the presence of death, andleave its divine stamp upon the dead clay.