A thirty-minute ride through the country in a neighbor’s automobile and once more in life Harry Benton stepped foot upon the premises of his childhood.  His prayer had been answered.  His father seemed to be dying during the night, but with the coming of morning he revived and regained consciousness.  When Harry and Eva entered the room where his father lay, the old saint seemed as happy as a child and much rejoiced at seeing Harry and Eva and their babies, who were the last of a great flock of sons and sons-in-law and daughters and daughters-in-law and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to arrive.

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”  Since Jake Benton’s conversion, more than a quarter of a century previously to this time, his life had been one continuous sermon—­a sermon more eloquent than any ever preached from a pulpit.  But if the sermon of his life was eloquent, that of his death was more so.  According to his simple philosophy, life was just a sort of lodging-place beside the long road to eternity, and death, to him, was not a leaving home, but rather a starting for home.

When he gathered his loved ones about his bedside on the day following the arrival of Harry and his family, to say goodbye, it was not the goodbye of one who was entering upon a dark and perilous journey to parts unknown, but that of one sustained by an unfailing faith that he was entering upon an abode in the eternal mansion, where he should wait but a brief period for the coming of those he loved.

Just as the purple shadows of the October evening were lengthening, the end was drawing near.  The hoary patriarch called his children all by name—­Harry and Eva, Joe and his wife, Albert and his wife, Nancy and her husband, Hannah and her husband, and Hattie, the unmarried daughter yet at home—­and they all gathered in the room where death was to be a guest.  The grandchildren, happy and care-free, unconscious of what life is and of what death means, were called in from their places of play, and told that Grandpa was leaving them.  The little tots, bless them, came in and stood around the old-fashioned bedstead all unmindful of the significance of a meeting of time and eternity.  They gathered around and gazed into the old saint’s face, where death and life alternately wrote their names.  As they passed around one by one by the head of the bed, the old man laid his withered hands upon each little head and pronounced his blessing.  Then he began to talk.

“If this is death,” he said, “it is a blessed thing to die.  The way has been long and the road rough, at times, but now it is all over.  I have suffered a few things for Jesus’ sake, but how unworthy I have been of all the love He has shown me.  I have only one dying request to make of my loved ones, and it is the same as my living request has been, that you all live for God and meet me over there.  Oh, I am so happy.  How I love Jesus, and on His bosom I shall rest forever.”