Death “Just An Incident:” How Courageous Teacher Faced Last, Long Journey

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 100, 21 November 1947, Page 3

Death “Just An Incident:” How Courageous Teacher Faced Last, Long Journey

(Contributed by the Ministers’ Association) Instantly his face brightened when his wife told him the end was near, and he said, “Isn’t that interesting?” Miraculously, it seemed, his pulse strengthened and Dr. W. Cosby Bell, “one of the great spirits of the Episcopal Church of America,” talked with his wife an hour before the light went out. Remembering his often-expressed wish to face death while still conscious, Mrs Bell had told her husband that it was the time of fulfilment. A part of what was said in that last hour was a message to the students of the Virginia Theological Seminary, of whose faculty Dr. Bell was a distinguished member. The message is quoted by “The Churchman” (Episcopal) thus: “Tell the boys that I’ve grown surer of God every year of my life, and I’ve never been so sure as I am right now.

“Why, it’s all so!—it’s a fact—it’s a dead certainty. I’m so glad to find that I haven’t the least shadow of shrinking or uncertainty. . . . I’ve been preaching and teaching these things all my life, and I’m so interested to find that all we’ve been believing and hoping is so. I’ve always thought so, and now that I’m right up against it, I know. . . . Tell them I say ‘good-bye’—they’ve been a joy to me.

“I’ve had more than any man that ever lived, and life owes me nothing. I’ve had work I loved, and I’ve lived in a beautiful place among congenial friends. I’ve had love in its highest form, and I’ve got it for ever. ... I can see now that death is just the smallest thing—just an incident—that it means nothing.”

“No one who knew Dr. Bell would find in the message anthing but absolute consistency with his life,” comments “The Churchman.” “It is impossible to read it without recalling the words from the Cross, ‘lt is finished.’ A rare life, rounded and perfected, a portrait of the Master.” One Fight More “I was ever a fighter—one fight more The best and the last! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, And bade me creep past. No! let me taste the whole of it, face like my peers The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears Of pain, darkness and cold, For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute’s at end, And the elements rage, the friend—voices that woe, Shall, dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a piece out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest.” |