No Mercy For Me

“I once attended on his dying bed,” says the author of “Damascus,” “‘a man whose early history had given promise of better things, but whose goodness was as the morning cloud and the early dew. As I entered the room, he fixed his eyes upon me with a fearful expression of countenance, and in the spirit, almost in the very language, of the Gadarene demoniac, exclaimed, ‘Why are you come to torment me?’ I replied, ‘I am not come to torment you: I am come to tell you that there is mercy, mercy yet, and mercy even for you.’

He raised his arm with vehemence, and said, ‘No mercy for me! no mercy for me! no mercy for me! I have sinned through all: I have despised all. I am dying, and I am damned!’ His arm fell, and he apparently ceased to breathe.

I thought him dead, but was mistaken: there still was life, there was even consciousness. Fetching a long-drawn breath, as if for some desperate effort, and covering his face with the evident intention of concealing the agony which was written there, he uttered the most awful groan I ever heard, and then expired.”