The Promise of Resurrection

What an unfailing hope is offered all those who repent and trust in Jesus Christ as Saviour!  While reading Ichabod Spencer's A Pastor's Sketches I came across a fitting poem for the season of Easter.  Though the bodies of all men are corrupted through age, sickness, and injury, death for Christians is not the end:  our souls are released immortal and incorruptible upon the death of our bodies.  The souls of men will either spend eternity in eternal torment and separation from God because of their sin, or will flourish in eternal strength and glory in the presence of Christ whose righteousness, suffering, death, and resurrection made it possible!  Below is the poem exactly as it appears in Volume 2, page 276.

THE DEATH-BED OF THE POOR !

"Tread softly-bow the head-

In reverent silence bow;

No passing bell doth toll-

Yet an immortal soul

is passing now.

Stranger! however great,

With lowly reverence bow;

There's one in that poor shed-

One on that paltry bed-

Greater than thou.

Beneath that beggar's roof,

Lo!  Death doth keep his state.

Enter-no crowd attend;

Enter-no guards defend

This palace gate.

That pavement, damp and cold,

no smiling courtiers tread;

One silent woman stands-

Lifting with meagre hands

A dying head.

No mingling voices sound-

And infant wail alone;

A sob suppressed-again

That short, deep gasp, and then

The parting groan.

Oh, change!-oh, wondrous change!-

Burst are the prison bars;

This moment there, so low,

So agonized; and now

Beyond the stars.

Oh change!-stupendous change!

There lies the soulless clod.

The sun eternal breaks-

The new immortal wakes-

Wakes with his God."