This morning, as I opened the door of the ladies’ room at the hospital, I found M., as usual, before me at her post busily working. She greeted me with “Mr. —— (our chaplain) has just been in, to say that Browning is to be baptized this morning, and he would like us to be present; so we shall have to be prompt with our work.”

This Browning was a striking instance of the mercy and long-suffering of our dear Lord and Master. After a wholly irreligious life, he had entered the army, (though quite advanced in years,) at the breaking out of the rebellion, where, instead of being struck down by a bullet, a long and suffering illness in the hospital had been graciously granted to him; it had borne its fruit, and this day, the brow furrowed by sin, and the hair whitened in the service of another master, are to be moistened by baptismal waters.

He has been perfectly blind for many days, and is evidently sinking. At the appointed hour we gather around his bed, the Chaplain, the Surgeon in charge, (whose presence and interest in the occasion impress the men far more than he imagines,) M., and myself. The holy words are pronounced, and he is enlisted as “Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end;” that end, which, alas! seems so very near. As we approach to speak to him, he looks up, no longer with the blank, vacant gaze of sightless eyes, which he has worn for so many days, but with a bright smile of recognition, saying, in a tone almost of surprise, “Friends, dear friends, God has given me light.” I thought he alluded to the light which had just dawned upon his spirit, but not so; it seemed as though the inward illumination had indeed extended to his physical frame; sight was restored to the darkened eye of the body also, and mercifully continued during the few remaining days of his life. To the many, this fact will appear a strange coincidence; to the few, something more.

Scarcely has the closing prayer ascended; scarcely have we turned to leave the bedside, when there is a bustle—an excitement—a sudden stir. “A man dying in the third ward; come quickly, come, won’t you?”

We hasten to the spot, and to our surprise find that the Angel of Death is before us. A man, whom we had been watching for some time, ill with that terrible scourge—the Chickahominy fever—and whom we had left not half an hour since, apparently in no danger, by some strange change is suddenly and certainly dying. His sister, who has been watching him, night and day, had left him to prepare some drink for him; in her absence he had attempted to rise from his pillow; the effort was too much, and he had, as she imagined, fainted.

But to any eye, whose sad lot it has been to watch that dark, cold, grey shadow, once seen, never forgotten, marvellous in its mystery, strange in its stern solemnity, as it slowly settles on some loved face; to any ear, that has listened to those long, convulsive breaths, with their longer and more dreadful intervals, it could not but be evident that this was no fainting, but the terrible sundering of soul and body. Man’s hand here was powerless. In answer to the sister’s agonized appeal to the surgeon, brandy is offered, but in vain; and we stand silently and sadly waiting till the dread struggle shall be ended. And still we stand, and still we wait. It seems as though something held and chained the soul to earth; it cannot part—it cannot burst its earthly case.

One by that bed whispers to the chaplain—

“The Last Prayer.”

We kneel once more, and once more the wonderful words of the Prayer-book speak for us in our hour of need. It is enough. The cord is broken—the chain is loosed; the soul seems to rise upon the wings of those solemn words; for ere they are done, a broken-hearted sister feels that she is alone.

It is not desirable to enter upon any description of the sorrowful scene of excited and undisciplined grief which followed; three hours afterwards, we succeeded in inducing her to take an anodyne and go to bed. Character, mental training, and spiritual attainment, are never more clearly shown than in the manner in which a great sorrow is borne; much, of course, depends upon temperament, but as a rule, I think we may safely affirm, that the most violent outward expression has the least inward root; that the griefs which crush and slowly sap life, are seldom noisily and vehemently vented in their first freshness.

That night, as I sat where the soft shadows of summer moonlight played peacefully in and out among grand old trees, my thoughts naturally clung to the scenes through which I had been passing, and dwelt upon those two who had both, though so differently, that day “entered into Life;” the one, through the Golden Gate of Baptism; the other, through “the grave and gate of death;” and in the calmness of that still night, the fervent wish arose, that they might both attain a “joyful resurrection, for His merits, Who died, and was buried, and rose again for us.”