came extremely doubtful. Every one but himself was, beyond expression, anxious for his life.. Prayer-meetings were appointed, and numerously attended. Many strong cries and tears were offered up; but the decree was gone forth. The supplications of the flock could not prevail for the recovery of the pastor. The approach of an enemy, which every one around him dreaded, he hailed with composure and joy. One day, after a severe fit of coughing, he said to his attendant, "The way seems hard; but it is the way the children of God all go, and I do not wish to be exempted from it. I know that my Redeemer liveth. I feel him precious. He supports me under all. O that I were able to express all I feel!" The doctor coming in soon afterward, asked him how he was. He replied, "Partly here and partly elsewhere." Another day, he said to the person who attended him, "How awful a thing it is for a man to be brought to his dying bed, and to have no hope beyond the grave! It is truly awful-but, blessed be God, this is not my case."

On Tuesday morning, March 19, he gave his most affectionate blessing to his son. "I hope," said he, 'the Lord will bless you when I am gone. I trust he will; and I commend you to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified. The Lord bless you-the Lord bless you!"

As his strength declined apace, he was soon unfit to see any of his friends but his immediate attendants, who had now given up all hope of his recovery. The vio- · lence of the fever acting on his enfeebled system, had left only the ruins of what he had been but they were the ruins of a noble mind. He spoke much of the glories of heaven, and the happiness of separate spirits; of their robes of righteousness, and their palms of victory; then, breathing his ardent wishes for the happiness

of all who were present, he added, "Pardon, peace, and everlasting felicity, are desirable things." At length the thread of life was spun out, and, after a day of apparent suffering, on Saturday, the 24th of March, 1799, he fell asleep in Jesus, a little after midnight, and spent his Sabbath in the regions of bliss. Thus, after an active and laborious life, of which twenty-six years were spent in the town of Macclesfield, this eminent servant of Christ finished his course, and went to receive his reward.

19. DR. WILBUR FISK.

"Whence this brave bound o'er limits fixed to man?
His God sustains him in his final hour!

We gaze; we weep; mix tears of grief and joy!
Amazement strikes! devotion bursts to flame!

Christians adore! and infidels believe!"-YOUNG.

THIS eminent servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, was cut off in the height of his usefulness. He entered the ministry in 1818, being then twenty-six years of age. He soon became distinguished for his soundness as a divine, and for his eloquence and success as a preacher. In 1830 he was elected the first president of the Wesleyan University, which post he occupied till his death. In this sphere his noble talents found full scope for their exercise, and he became one of the most popular as well as most successful educators of youth. His constitution, naturally frail and with a strong tendency to pulmonary disease, soon began to give out under the excessive cares and labours to which he was subject in his new situation; and in the fall of 1838, it became apparent that he could not hold out much longer. His last sermon was preached in a sitting posture at a watch-meeting in the church in Middletown at the close of this year. His text "Few

and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage"-was beautifully appropriate; and his discourse upon life, death, and immortality was eloquent and affecting..

After a medical consultation had come to an unfavourable decision in his case, some one inquired how the prospect of death appeared. He immediately replied, "Death has no terror to me; but I have not that open vision of heaven I could desire. Pray for me that the prospect before me may brighten. I feel that my life has been a series of imperfections, and there is nothing I can rest my hopes upon but the merits of Christ." His biographer says, that the succession of scenes which took place after this in his dying chamber, were in the highest degree instructive and elevating. It was an almost uninterrupted exhibition of moral sublimity. His sufferings were extreme. His respiration was exceedingly difficult and attended with paroxysms, during which it appeared as though every breath would be his last. Most that he said during this period was gasped out word by word, and often syllable by syllable. At one time, after he had been speaking of rest in heaven, he exclaimed, “Ah, what is rest to me, that I indulge anticipations of it, while there are so many unconverted in the world, going down to eternal woe? I see much to be done but any active mind can do it; and the work of God is in his own hands. He can do without me. What am I, or my father's house, that God should have honoured me to share in the ministry of the Gospel? I bless him that he has made me the humble instrument of doing anything-the least thing-for him. It is all of grace. Boasting is excluded. The glory is all his, the shame all mine. I want a score of years more to do anything like what a man ought to do in the course of his life."

At another time, comparing the little he had done with his anticipations of a place in heaven, he said, “I shall be a star of small magnitude, but it is a wonder that I shall get to heaven at all. It is because love works miracles, that such a feeble, sinful worm may be saved by grace. O, the mercy of God, to put such comeliness on such a worm as I! I am an unprofitable servant. How little have I done of what I might have done!"

Thus, "having no confidence in the flesh," all his hope of salvation rested on the atonement of the Lamb. "What a blessed state to be in," he observed, "to be anything God pleases. The will of God appears unspeakably beautiful to me; but, alas! I fail of fulfilling it in a great many ways. But, for all this, I have thrown myself on the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. O, yes! I feel that my soul is centred in the love of God in Christ Jesus." Thus, again: "If I have been instrumental in a little good, I thank God for it. I am an unprofitable servant. All my hope is in Christ."

Once only did he experience any peculiar temptation or mental conflict. In the early part of his illness, he remarked that "the enemy was thrusting sore" at him, and immediately said to the Rev. Horace Bartlett, "If you have any faith, pray." When the prayer was closed, he expressed his deliverance from the gathering cloud, and from that time nothing seemed to obstruct his view of his Saviour and the better world.

His faith in the truths of Christianity never wavered. When asked if he still believed the doctrines which he had preached to others, he replied, with emphasis, "Yes; they are God's truths, and will bear the light of eternity."

Sunday, the 10th of February, was a day of uncommon interest and solemnity. There was not the least prospect of his recovery, so that it was not thought

necessary to restrain him from conversing; and yet his strength was not so far exhausted as to prevent the free play of his mind and feelings. The scene in his chamber was transcendently elevating. In the morning he asked Mrs. Fisk what day it was. On ascertaining, he observed, "This would be a good day to die." "Perhaps," said Mrs. Fisk, "the Lord will take you to his rest this day."

"Then I can worship," was his answer, "with the Sabbath-keeping band in heaven; but I cannot here."

On being told that he always loved the Sabbath, "Yes," he replied; "and though it was a day of toil to me, yet I loved my work. To me the Sabbath has been an emblem of that promised rest. O, that rest is sweet!. It is glorious!"

He then beckoned Martha (an adopted daughter) to him, saying, “Let us pray together;" and, throwing an arm around each of them as they knelt before him, he offered up a prayer, gasping it out word by word, which seemed the very language of the spiritual world. It was deep, pathetic, powerful, sublime. Then, as they arose from their knees, he said, " Vain human reasoners often tell us that the soul and the body will go down together to the dust, because the spirit is depressed when the body is; but it is not true. These clogs of earth have often retarded the operations of my mind, and been as so many barriers to its activity. But I now feel a strength of soul and an energy of mind, which this body, though afflicted and pained, cannot impair.

The soul has an energy of its own; and so far from my body pressing my soul down to the dust, I feel as if my soul had almost power to raise the body upward and bear it away; and it will at last, by the power of God, effectually draw it to heaven, for its attractions are thitherward." Then, turning to Mrs. Fisk, he said, "Think not, when you see this poor feeble body stretched