Scripture Verse

Introduction

Anecdote

Each mem­ber of the Ma­son­ic Quar­tet of Pitts­burgh [Penn­syl­van­ia] re­cent­ly re­ceived a check and a note of thanks for sing­ing at the fun­er­al of Cap­tain S. S. Brown. An unu­su­al sto­ry was al­so made pub­lic there­by.

In the last hours of the turf king’s life, one of the dai­ly pap­ers says, he had an in­ter­val in which his mind was clear. He called his daugh­ter-in-law and asked if she would take on her­self the task of see­ing that The Chris­tian’s Good Night was sung at his fun­er­al; and he told her, in a dis­joint­ed way, of a dream from which he had just awak­ened.

He had thought him­self dead, and there were four min­is­ters tak­ing part in his fu­ner­al. He named the min­is­ters and said that one of them had brok­en down while mak­ing an ad­dress, and that an­oth­er, nam­ing this min­is­ter al­so, had ta­ken up the ad­dress.

Cap­tain Brown said that he awoke as all were sing­ing, The Chris­tian’s Good-night, and that he had joined with them in the sing­ing. The dy­ing man smiled faint­ly at the pic­ture he drew, but begged his daugh­ter-in-law to re­mem­ber her prom­ise.

The words of this hymn were oc­ca­sioned by the death of a friend. They were hand­ed to me at Bris­tol, Eng­land.

I wrote the mu­sic soon af­ter­ward, and sang it at the fu­ner­al of Charles H. Spur­geon, the great Lon­don preach­er. It has since be­come ve­ry use­ful on two con­ti­nents as a fu­ner­al hymn.

Sankey, pp. 259–60