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LeRoy Tate Newland (1885-1969) was a graduate of Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina; a long-time missionary to Korea; and he served at least two pastorates in the United States as well. He was also a prolific poet. A small number of his poems are available at Log College Press. His major work of poetry is not yet available here: So Rich a Crown: Poems of Faith (1963). One particular poem by Newland has been selected for today’s post. It appears to have been prompted by the 1953 death of L.D. Tester in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, while Newland was serving as pastor of Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church (source: Donald B. Saunders, For His Cause A Little House: A Hundred Year History of Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church (1988), p. 114). This poem was also reprinted in the Christian Observer with notice of Newland’s own death in 1969.
A Christian’s Death
And what is death?
A sudden stopping of the breath
That one may breathe a rarer air
Where all is fair.
You say he died.
Can life be greater glorified
Than to unclose pain-wearied eyes
In Paradise?
Is this the end?
He has but gone to meet a Friend
And, dying, found a way
To endless day.
Christian, consider this sweet meditation on the precious death of a saint (Ps. 116:15), and may it help to bring an eternal perspective to the painful event which caused even our Lord Jesus to weep (John 11:35).
