At this distance of time I can only give the freest rendering of his words, the more so as I have so often used them in my own meetings that I may have unconsciously moulded them after my own fashion.

"Look," he said, "at that dying father--dying in the faith, having fought the good fight, and all heaven now opening before his dying gaze.

Yet he withdraws his thoughts from that great hereafter to centre them upon the little lad who stands at his bedside.

His hands wander over the golden head with "'The vast sad tenderness of dying men.' He triumphs over pain and weakness that he may plot and plan every detail of the young life which he can no longer live to guide and direct.

And when at length he seems to have passed into the last darkness, and they hold up the child to see if he will yet recognize him, suddenly the spirit seems to sweep back again over the dark river which it has almost crossed, and an ineffable light illumines the dying face as his lips meet the lips of his little son in one last supreme kiss--the father's love for one moment vanquishing death itself.