The Shadow of Eternity

I HAD a dream, and in my dream I thought that I was dying. I awoke with the solemnities of eternity pressing upon my heart. The world seemed far away to me, who had thus in thought hovered on the borders of the unseen. My soul seemed to be filled with dim conceptions and unexplained foreshadowings. The shadow of eternity seemed to have fallen upon me. And am I thus so near eternity? so near that any moment I may be in it? Yes, it is even so — tomorrow I may be gone. Where?
Solemn thought! I look across the seas and see the mighty shadow resting upon millions of men — men lining the trenches — manning the guns — leaping to the charge — lying like swathes of corn mown by the reaper Death, helpless, bleeding, dying, dead under the skies of God! O God! we lift appealing hands to Thee. We cannot save them, but we can pray for them. We have loved ones there — sons and husbands and brothers. Cover their heads, O God, in the day of battle! Send Thy legions of angels from the skies to guard them as we pray. And, O Almighty God, help us, as we love them and Thee, to send Thy holy Word to them. May it never be our reproach in the day of our death that we failed to do our duty to them.
We know, as one has beautifully said, “that Christ walks the battlefields of France and Belgium, as surely as in days gone by He trod the shores of Galilee.” May He be consciously near our loved ones, in the midst of the horrors and the tumult of the strife; may they hear Him say, “My peace I give unto you... let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”