'Your money, sir?' 'My money, sir, what, all?
Why, if I must,' then wept, 'I give to Paul.'
'The manor, sir?' 'The manor hold!' he cried,
'Not that I cannot part with that!'-and died."

The "ruling passion strong in death" is drawn in another picture, equally true and graphic, by the same master hand:

:

"Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke!'
Were the last words that poor Narcipsa spoke.
'No! let a charming chintz and brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face.
One need not, sure, be frightful, though one's dead;
And, Betty, give my cheek a little red.'"

The poor, frivolous, sceptical Rabelais, on his death-bed,
said, "I am going to try the great Perhaps !" Anne
Boleyn, the mistress of Henry VIII., vain of her finely-
turned and beautiful neck, just before her execution said
to the lieutenant of the Tower, "I hear that the execu-
tioner is very good, and I have a little neck;" at the
same time clasping it with her hands and laughing. Sir
Thomas More, equally vain of his beard, when he had
laid his head upon the block, and the executioner was
about to aim the blow of death, said to him, "Stay,
friend, till I put aside my beard, for that never com-
mitted treason." Fabre d'Eglantine, when preparing
for the guillotine, only regretted that he was compelled
to leave unpublished a comedy which he had written,
and which he apprehended Vananes would publish as
his own.
Talma, the French tragedian, during his
dying moments, continually called on the name of Vol-
taire, as if he knew no other divinity. It is certainly
possible, then, to hug one's delusion even in a dying
hour to die "as dieth the fool." Nor, on the other
hand, can we fully receive-though the exceptions are
still more unfrequent-that expression of Augustine-
"Non potest male mori, qui bene vixerit "-No man

can die ill who has lived well. For we believe it possible, from some idiosyncrasy of the individual, some peculiarity of temperament, some peculiar effect of the physical malady, or even from some morbid state of the moral and religious feelings, for one who has lived well to die gloomy and wretched. The poet Cowper, though once possessed of the consolations of religion, afterwards became subject to despondency, which at length deepened. into despair. He believed himself forsaken of God and destined to eternal ruin. This lamentable state of mind cast a gloomy shade over his later years, and it was hardly lifted up even at the closing scene of his life. When a friend sought to encourage him with the prospect of a speedy release from suffering, and of an entrance upon the glorified state, he besought him to desist; and the night of death as it was gathering around him seemed only to deepen the darkness of that delusion that had embittered his life. Yet no one could doubt the genuineness of his piety, or the security of his future state.

These statements are not made to lessen in the mind the importance of the spiritual phenomena exhibited while in the dying state; but to guard against undue and improper reliance upon them, and to prepare the way for an inquiry into their true value. But to pass from these facts to the general conclusion, that the dying scene is unaffected by the moral and religious character, the past history, or the future prospects of the individual, would be unwarranted either by reason or facts. We might say that the state of the mind in the hour of death is not an infallible test of truth; and even that it is not an infallible test of the religious state of the individual. The Hindoo widow will sit down with tranquil composure upon the funeral pyre; and the Indian savage, while the fire of his enemies is kindling and burning around him, will hurl a frenzied exulting triumph in their teeth. But these were instances of minds acted upon by some

mighty impulse-a height of enthusiasm or an excitement of passion, that for the moment held in check every other instinct or impulse. A sublime exhibition of this was given in the Girondists who went forth to execution chanting their national hymn, and as one after another continued to fall under the blade of death, the others continued their song till the last victim was heard alone. Seneca truthfully said, that "Not only the brave and wretched, but even the fastidious can wish to die." And Lord Bacon, also, said, "Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honour aspires to it; grief flies to it; fear preoccupates it." But widely different are all these from the scenes of triumph exhibited by the Christian in the hour of death; or, on the other hand, from those scenes of despair and woe exhibited by the dying sinner, from whose eye no rank delusion or frenzied enthusiasm has shut out the light of God's truth, and the appalling retributions of the future state.

The Holy Scriptures do unquestionably make an emphatic distinction between the death of the righteous and that of the wicked; and human experience is found in strict accordance with divine revelation. "The sting

of death is sin; but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." Of the righteous it is said, "he hath hope in his death," and that his end is "peace;" but of the wicked, that he "is driven away in his wickedness." The righteous is represented as "in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ;" while again it is said that "when the wicked man dieth, his expectations shall perish." The dying saint is heard to exclaim, "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord;"-" Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me;"-" My flesh and my heart faileth, but

God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever:" but of the wicked it is said, "Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away," and "he would fain flee out of God's hand." With these facts of revelation before us, who can doubt but that there is a moral and religious significance in the phenomena of life's closing scene! It is here, in the light of revealed truth, that we learn why the righteous, "with heaven full in view," can meet death with the song of triumph"The festal morn, my God, is come,

That calls me to thy hallow'd home."

While, on the other hand, the mental agonies of the wicked, stung with remorse, wrought up to desperation by "a fearful looking-for of judgment," consciencesmitten and dismayed,

"Tell what lesson may be read

Beside a sinner's dying bed."

These death-bed scenes constitute a part of "the portable evidence of Christianity." It is the concentrated light of earthly experience reflected from the future back upon the disc of time. It is at this moment that the dying sinner seems to anticipate the horrors of the damned the dying saint to receive a foretaste of the felicities of the redeemed.

Part First.

THE DYING CHRISTIAN.