A reading of Anglican priest Robert Hawker’s (1753–1827) morning devotional writings from “The Poor Man’s Morning and Evening Portion.”
The music for this reading is “American Wigeon” by Chad Crouch and was adapted for length under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
And Israel strengthened himself, and sat up on the bed.— Gen . 48:2.
This was an interesting moment in the life, or rather the death, of the patriarch, and may serve, my soul! to show what ought to be the conduct of the believer in his last expiring hours. The imagination can hardly conceive any situation equally momentous, in every point of view, both as it concerns a faithful God, a man’s own heart, and the church the dying saint is going to leave behind. What can form a more lovely sight than a dying saint, sitting up in the bed, (if the Lord permits the opportunity,) and recounting, as Jacob did, the gracious dealings of the Lord, all the way along the path of pilgrimage—“ The God which fed me,” said Jacob, “ all my life long unto this day : the angel (and who was this but Jesus?) which redeemed me from all evil.” Pause, my soul! Anticipate such a day. Figure to thyself thy friends around thee, and thou thyself strengthened, just to sit up in the bed, to take an everlasting farewell. What hast thou to relate? What hast thou treasured up of God’s dealings with thee, to sweeten death in the recital, to bless God in the just acknowledgment, and to leave behind thee a testimony to others of the truth as it is in Jesus? My soul, what canst thou speak of? What canst thou tell of thy God, thy Jesus? Hast thou known enough of him to commit thyself into his Almighty hands, with an assurance of salvation? Pause! Didst thou not in the act of faith, long since, venture thyself upon Jesus for the whole of thy everlasting welfare? Didst thou not, from a perfect conviction of thy need of Jesus, and from as perfect a conviction of the power and grace of Jesus to save thee—didst thou not make a full and complete surrender of. thyself, and with the most perfect approbation of this blessed plan of God’s mercy in Christ, to be saved wholly by him, and wholly in his own way, and wholly to his own glory And, as such, art thou now afraid, or art thou now shrinking back, when come within sight almost of Jesus’s arms to receive thee ? Oh no! blessed be God! this last act of committing thy soul is not as great an act of faith as the first was; for since that time thou hast had thousands of evidences, and thousands of tokens in love and faithfulness that thy God is true. Sit up, then, my soul, and do as the dying patriarch did, recount to all around thee thy confidence in the Son of God, who hath loved thee, and given himself for thee. Cry out, as he did, “I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord!” And as this will be the last opportunity of speaking a word for God, testify of his faithfulness, and encourage all that behold you to he seeking after an interest in Jesus, from seeing how sweetly you close a life of faith before you begin a life of glory ; in blessing God, though with dying lips, that the last notes which you utter here, below, may be only the momentary interruption to the same subject in the first of your everlasting song—“ To him that hath loved you, and washed you from your sins in his blood.”
