To Remember Me By

I have read an incident in a paper, lately, that deeply moved my heart, and caused me to feel that it ought to be read by every one, as an incentive to do more for the poor and destitute, and is well calculated to afford us pleasure in reviewing our lives from the Better Country. The incident is this: A beautiful girl of ten years was dying. The family had gathered about her couch, the father almost distracted, the whole family bathed in tears, for she was the pet of the household.

How could they give her up? The father had fallen upon his knees near her pillow, sobbing aloud at the thought of her leaving them, and could hardly say, Thy will be done. The little girl opened her eyes, and looked about upon the weeping ones that stood around her, said: Papa, dear papa? “What, my dear Lillian, do you want of me?”

“Papa”, she answered, in faint, broken accents, “How much do I cost you every year?” Her father tried to hush her, for fear she would be worse if she talked. But she was so anxious to do good to poor children that she again faintly said: “Please, papa, how much do I cost you?”

The father, to soothe his dying child, said, “Well my dear Lillian, perhaps two or three hundred dollars. But, my darling, what did you want to know that for?”

Because, papa, I thought may be you would lay it out this year for Bibles for poor children to remember me by. The father replied, I will, yes, I will, this year, and every year, as long as I live, that my dear Lillian may speak to thousands of poor children by these Bibles, that they may give themselves to Christ, and you meet them all in heaven, and they and you have something to remember each other by. Let me ask the reader of this incident what are you going to leave behind to be remembered by?

May I not ask you all to do as this little girl did? Leave something to be remembered by. Do something each day worthy of remembrance. Jesus says, “The poor ye have with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good.

In this way we may make to ourselves friends that will receive us into everlasting habitations.”