sufficient to do. It meets not the exigencies of the sinner's case. It is neither obedience to the law, nor to the gospel, neither love to God, nor faith in Christ. It is in its loveliest form only the cobweb covering of a fair exterior, and wrapped only in this covering, the soul shudders at the thought of death, and falls back in dismay at the sight of the great tribune.

The Apostle enjoyed great peace in the near prospect of death; but it was derived not from a moral life, but from faith in Christ, from evidence felt within that he had a personal interest in the great salvation, and was clothed in His righteousness who had loved him and given himself to die for him. This is the only sure ground of peace in the hour of death. Every other is then found to be insufficient, and trusted in, ends in destruction. It is not giving up the breath, said the nobleman before referred to, it is not being for ever insensible, that is the thought at which I shrink; it is the terrible hereafter, the something beyond the grave, at which I recoil. Those great realities which in the hours of mirth and vanity I have treated as phantoms, as the idle dreams of superstitious beings, these start forth and dare me now in their most terrible demonstrations. 0, friends, exclaimed the pious Janeway, we little think what Christ is worth on a death-bed. I would not now for a world, nay, for millions of worlds, be without Christ and pardon. God might justly condemn me, said Richard Baxter, for the best deeds I ever did, and all my hopes are from the free mercy of God in Christ.

my

Said the meek and learned Hooker, as he approached his end, Though I have by his grace loved God in my youth and feared him in my age, and labored to have a conscience void of offence to him and to all men, yet, if thou, O Lord, be extreme to mark what I have done amiss, who can abide it? And, therefore, where I have failed show mercy to me, for I plead not my righteousness, but the forgiveness of my unrighteousness, for His merits who died to purchase pardon for penitent sinners. Such too were the feelings of our own venerated Hooker* in his dying hour. To a friend who said to him, Sir, you are going to receive the reward of your labors, he replied-Brother, I am going to receive mercy. And not to mention other examples under this head, let me refer to the case of Dr. Johnson. He was a moral man; but his morality could not soften the terrors of a death-bed, nor give him the least peace in prospect of meeting his Judge. When a friend, to calm his agitated mind, referred him to his correct morals and useful life for topics of consolation, he put them away as nothing worth, and in bitterness

*First pastor of the First Church in Hartford,—died 1647,

of soul exclaimed, Shall I, who have been a teacher of others, be myself cast away? This great man had not then fled for refuge to the blood of atonement, as he afterward did; and therefore, notwithstanding his moral and useful life, he was afraid to die, and all beyond the grave looked dark and gloomy to him. And so must it look to all who come to the dying hour with no better preparation than is furnished in a moral life.

4. Men, at the hour of death, are constrained to acknowl edge the folly and guilt of an irreligious life, and the supreme importance of a saving interest in the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever apologies are made in the days of health and prosperity for the neglect of religion, those apologies are found utterly worthless on a death-bed, and are renounced as vain and delusive. All excuses vanish in the presence of the king of terrors, and the sinner looks back with self-reproach and astonishment upon the presumption and folly which led him to disregard God, and neglect the concerns of his eternity. Religion is then felt to be indeed the one thing needful, and the whole earth too poor to be given in exchange for the soul. I have attended many death-beds in the course of my ministry, but I recollect no instance where reason was in exercise, in which this acknowledgement was not ready to be made. All are then ready to exclaim, O that I had been wise, that I had understood and considered my latter end. And even Christians, as much as they love and prize religion in life, feel, when they come to die, that their highest and best views of its importance were far below the reality. They see, then, that it is the only true wisdom to live for God and eternity, and they are amazed to think that they have lived at so poor a rate, and have done so little for the honor of Christ and the advancement of his cause on earth. However men may differ respecting the value and importance of religion in health, there is but one opinion on the subject when they come to lie upon the bed of death. The great question which then absorbs all others, and presses with overwhelming weight on the soul, is: Have I a saving interest in the Lord Jesus Christ? Have I been born of the Spirit? Am I pardoned through the blood of atonement, and prepared to appear before my Judge in peace? The world, with all its pomp, pleasures, and interests, then appears infinitely too light to engage a single thought in comparison with the great question,-Am I a Christian, and may I hope on good ground to enter into the joy of my Lord on leaving this earthly abode? None find peace and hope in that hour, but those who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before them in the Gospel. The world retires then, and leaves its wretched votaries in poverty and despair. But heaven comes near to sustain and comfort the faithful servants of God; and they feel that an interest

in Christ is of more value than a thousand worlds like this. Look at Enoch walking with God, and through faith was exempted from death, and was not for God took him: at David comforting himself in the close of life in the assurance that God had made an everlasting covenant with him, ordered in all things and sure: at Paul joyfully declaring in the near view of death, "I know in whom I have believed:" at the dying missionary, Ziegenbalger, exclaiming, "Washed from my sins in the blood of Christ, and clothed with his righteousness, I shall enter into his eternal kingdom:" at Swartz sweetly singing his soul away to everlasting bliss: at Baxter, saying, amid the sinkings of nature, "I am almost well:" at Owen, lifting up his eyes and his hands as if in a kind of rapture, and exclaiming to a friend, " O, brother, the long looked-for day has come at last, in which I shall see the glory of Christ in another manner than I have ever yet done:" at Edwards, comforting his family, as they stood around his dying bed, with the memorable words, "Trust in God, and you have nothing to fear:" at Martyn, in the solitudes of Persia, writing thus a few days before his death, "I sat alone, and thought with sweet comfort and peace of God, in solitude my company, my friend, and comforter:" at Dwight, exclaiming, when the seventeenth chapter of John was read to him, "O, what triumphant truths:" at Evarts, shouting "Glory! Jesus reigns!" as he closed his eyes on death: at Payson, uttering the language of assurance, as he grappled with the last enemy, "The battle is fought! the battle is fought! and the victory is won forever!" In a word, look at the great cloud of witnesses, who, in the faith of Jesus, have triumphed over death and the grave, and peacefully closed their eyes on the world in a joyful hope of opening them in another and a better, and you will learn in what estimation religion is held, when the scenes of earth are retiring, and those of eternity are opening upon the vision of dying men.

When men are laid upon the bed of death and know that they must go hence to be seen here no more, they always feel that it is indeed a solemn thing to die and pass into eternity. If there be exceptions, they are very rare, and occur only in cases of extreme skepticism, or of profound stupidity. Hume could amuse himself with playing chess when death was at the door; and Rousseau could lightly talk of giving back to God his soul as pure as when it came from his hand. But conduct like this is the extreme of infatuation, and can be regarded in no other light than as a part of the accursedness of those who are reprobate of God. Think of it as we may, while the event is viewed as future and distant, we shall all find, when the last hour comes, that it is indeed a serious matter to die. To close all our connection with this world; to lie down upon the bed

from which we shall never rise up; to have our bodies turned to dust, and our souls go into the world of spirits to appear before God, and pass the all-decisive trial, and enter upon a state of being that is never to change, these are events which may well make mortals tremble and shrink back at their approach. So the dying nobleman felt, whom I have more than once referred to, when he said,-a condemned wretch may, with as good a grace, go dancing to his execution, as the greatest part of mankind go on with such a thoughtless gayety to their graves. A future state, said the Duke of Buckingham, dying in despair, may well strike terror into a man who has not acted well in life; and he must have an uncommon share of courage indeed who does not shrink at the presence of God. And when Lord Chesterfield, skeptic and devotee of pleasure as he was, was compelled to acknowledge, as the closing scene drew on,-When one does see death near, let the best or the worst people say what they please, it is a serious consideration. Remorse for the past, exclaimed the dying Altamont, throws my thoughts on the future. Worse dread of the future strikes them back on the past. I turn and turn, and find no ray. Death is knocking at my doors; in a few hours more I shall draw my last gasp; and then the judgment, the tremendous judgment! How shall I appear, all unprepared as I am, before the all-knowing and omnipotent God? O eternity, eternity, cried the distracted Newport, as he lay upon his death-bed, contemplating the solemn scenes before him, who can paraphrase on the words for ever and ever?

Such are the confessions that are wont to be made by dying men; such the feelings and thoughts that crowd upon the mind as the last hour approaches. And in view of them we may remark,-

1. They are founded in truth; there is just cause for them. It is true that life is short, and that time is of infinite value. It is true that this world contains nothing which can satisfy the wants of the immortal mind. It is true that a moral life is utterly insufficient as a preparation for death and the judgment. It is true that an irreligious life is a life of extreme folly and presumption, and that a saving interest in Christ is a matter of supreme importance to every living man. It is true that it is a solemn thing to die and go into eternity, to appear before a holy God. And the wonder is, not that dying men should feel these things to be true, and be deeply affected by them, but that living men should treat them with indifference, and go through the world contradicting the feelings and views which are sure to crowd upon them with overwhelming interest in the day of death. Here is just matter of astonishment; and of all the strange things that are witnessed in the conduct of our fallen

race, this is the strangest, that men should walk in the midst of graves, convey their own friends and acquaintances to the house of silence, and meet every day and in every path of life with the most solemn monitions of their own approaching end, and still live as though they were never to die, and shut their eyes on scenes which must soon burst upon them in all the weight and solemnity of a present eternity. I remark,

2. That many of my hearers will, in a short time, view this subject in a very different light from that in which they now contemplate it. Some of you are young, and in the buoyant feelings of youth and health scarcely think it possible that you may soon be called to death and the judgment. Some of you are profoundly careless of your immortal well-being, and are so enamored of the things of the world that you seldom think of your latter end, or of what you need to prepare you to die. Others of you are perhaps skeptical as to the reality of a change of heart to fit you for the closing scene, and are trusting to a moral life as a foundation of hope in the coming day of trial; others of you still, who bear the Christian name, are probably deceived as to the ground of your hope, or are living in a state of backsliding from God, awfully unprepared for his summons to leave the world. To all such the Son of Man is likely to come in an hour they think not of; and when he comes, they will be thrown into fearful consternation, and the dreams with which they are now deluded will vanish forever. You have heard what is the testimony of dying men on some points of infinite moment to yourselves, but which you at present regard with little feeling, and treat with great neglect. But the time is not distant when you shall join your testimony with those that have gone before you into the invisible world; when the scene of life shall close, and your eternal state commence. whatever be your present views and feelings, it is not in the least doubtful what they will be then. Should you die in the exercise of your reason, you will look back with amazement on your present course of life, and wonder how you could be so infatuated as to neglect God and your souls, and make no preparation for the solemn scenes of a dying hour. Those of you who are now young will then learn that you are not too young to die; and those of you who are living securely in sin, that it is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; and those of you who are trusting to a moral life, that you are trusting to a foundation of sand; and those of you who are cold and formal in religion, that in such a state of mind you are sadly unprepared to die, and render up your account unto God. Death will bring your hearts and lives to a new and severe test, and draw from all of you the confession, that to fear God and keep his commandments is the first duty and the highest wisdom and happiness of every living man. Í remark,

And