raises himself on his pillow, extends a kind hand to his ser vants, which is bathed in tears; takes an affectionate farewel of his friends; clasps his wife in a feeble embrace; kisses the dear pledges of their mutual love; and then pours all that remains of life and strength in the following words :-" I die, my dear children: but GOD, the everlasting GoD, will be with you.--Though you lose an earthly parent, you have a Father in heaven, who lives for evermore.-Nothing, nothing but an unbelieving heart, and irreligious life, can ever separate you from the regards of his providence,-from the endearments of his love." cares. He could proceed no farther. His heart was full; but utterance failed.After a short pause, prompted by affectionate zeal, with difficulty, great difficulty, he added,— "You, the dear partner of my soul, you are now the only protector of our orphans.-I leave you under a weight of -But God, who defendeth the cause of the widow,God, whose promise is faithfulness and truth,-God hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.*This revives my drooping spirits: Let this support the wife of my bosom. -And now, O Father of compassions, into thy hands I commend my spirit.-Encouraged by thy promised goodness, I leave my fatherless" Here he fainted; fell back upon the bed, and lay for some minutes bereft of his senses. As a taper upon the very point of extinction is sometimes suddenly rekindled, and leaps into a quivering flame; so life, before it totally expired, gave a parting struggle, and once more looked abroad from the opening eye-lids.-He would fain have spoke; fain have uttered the sentence he began. More than once he assayed; but the organs of speech were become like a broken vessel, and nothing but the obstructing phlegm rattled in his throat. His aspect, however, spoke affection inexpressible. With all the father, all the husband, still living in his looks, he takes one more view of those dear children, whom he had often beheld with a parental triumph. He turns his dying eyes on that beloved woman, whom he never beheld but with a glow of delight. Fixed in this posture, amidst smiles of love, and under a gleam of heaven, they shine out their last. *Heb. xiii. 5. Upon this, the silent sorrow bursts into loud laments. They weep, and refuse to be comforted, till some length of time had given vent to the excess of passion, and the consolations of religion had stanched their bleeding woes. Then, the afflicted family search for the sentence which fell unfinished from those loved, those venerable and pious lips. They find it recorded by the prophet Jeremiah, containing the direction of infinite wisdom, and the promise of unbounded goodness: "Leave thy fatherless children: I will preserve them alive: and let thy widows trust in me.*”. This now is the comfort of their life, and the joy of their heart. They treasure it up in their memories. It is the best of legacies, and an inexhaustible fund. A fund, which will supply all their wants, by entailing the blessing of heaven on all their honest labors. They are rich, they are happy, in this sacred pledge of the divine favor. They fear no evil; they want no good; because God is their portion, and their guardian God. No sooner turned from one memento of my own, and memorial of another's decease, but a second, a third, a long succession of these melancholy monitors croud upon my sight. That which has fixed my observation, is one of a more grave and-sable aspect than the former. I suppose it preserves the relics of a more aged person. One would conjecture that he made somewhat of a figure in his station among the living, as his monument does among the funeral marbles. Let me draw near, and inquire of the stone," who, or what is beneath its surface?"-I am informed he was once the owner of a considerable estate, which was much improved by his own application and management: that he left the world in the busy period of life, advanced a little beyond the meridian. Probably, replied my musing mind, one of those indefatigable drudges, who rise early, late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness, not to secure the loving-kindness of the LORD, not to make provision for any reasonable necessity, but only to amass together ten thousand times more than they can possibly use. Did he not lay schemes for enlarging his fortune, and aggrandizing his family? Did he not Jer. xlix. 11. + Plurima mortis imago. VIRG. purpose to join field to field, and add house to house, till his possessions were almost as vast as his desires? That then he would sit down and enjoy what he had acquired, breathe a while from his toilsome pursuit of things temporal, and, perhaps, think a little of things eternal. But see the folly of worldly wisdom! How silly, how childish is the sagacity of (what is called) manly and masterly prudence, when it contrives more solicitously for TIME, than it provides for ETERNITY! How strangely infatuated are those subtile heads which weary themselves in concerting measures for phantoms of a day, and scarce bestow a thought on everlasting realities! When every wheel moves on smoothly; when all the well-disposed designs are ripening apace for execution; and the long-expected crisis of enjoyment seems to approach; behold! God from on high laughs at the Babel-builder. Death touches the bubble, and it breaks, it drops into nothing. The cob-web, most finely spun deed, but more easily dislodged, is swept away in an instant, and all the abortive projects are buried in the same grave with their projector. So true is that verdict which the wisdom from above passes on these successful unfortunates, They walk in a vain shadow, and disquiet themselves in vain."+ in Speak, ye that attended such a one in his last minutes ; ye that heard his expiring sentiments, did he not cry out, in the language of disappointed sensuality, "O death! how terrible is thy approach to a man immersed in secular cares, and void of all concern for the never ending hereafter? Where, alas! is the profit, where the comfort of entering deep into the knowledge, and of being dexterous in the dispatch of earthly affairs, since I have all the while neglected the one thing needful? Destructive mistake! I have been attentive to every inferior interest. I have laid myself out on the trifles of a moment, but have disregarded heaven, have forgot eternal ages! Oh! that my days.". -Here he was going on to breathe some fruitless wishes, or to form I know not what ineffectual resolutions; but a sudden convulsion Hac mente laborem, Sese ferre, senes ut in otia tuta recedant, † Psalm xxxix. 7. HOR. shook his nerves; disabled his tongue; and, in less than an hour, dissolved his frame. May the children of this world be warned by the dying words of an unhappy brother, and gather advantage from his misfortune. Why should they pant with such impatient ardor after white and yellow earth, as if the universe did not afford sufficient for every one to take a little! Why should they lade themselves with thick clay, when they are to "run for an incorruptible crown, and press towards the prize of their high calling?" Why should they overload the vessel in which their everlasting ALL is embarked; or fill their arms with superfluities, when they are to swim for their lives? Yet so preposterous is the conduct of those persons who are all industry to heap up an abundance of the wealth which perisheth, but scarce so much as faintly desirous of being rich towards God. O! that we may walk from henceforth through all these glittering toys, at least with a wise indifference, if not with a superior disdain! Having enough for the conveniencies of life, let us only accommodate ourselves with things below, and lay up our treasures in the regions above. Whereas, if we indulge an anxious concern, or lavish an inordinate care, on any transitory possessions, we shall rivet them to our affections with so firm an union, that the utmost severity of pain must attend the separating stroke. By such an eager attachment to what will certainly be ravished from us, we shall only ensure to ourselves accumulated anguish; against the agonizing hour aforesaid, we shall plant our dying pillow with thorns.* Some, I perceive, arrived at threescore years and ter, before they made their exit: nay, some few resigned not their breaths till they had finished fourscore revolving harvests.-These, I would hope," remembered their Creator in the days of their youth," before their strength became labor and sorrow; before that low ebb of languishing nature, when the keepers of the house tremble, and those that look out of the * Lean not on earth; 'twill pierce thee to the heart; On its sharp point peace bleeds, and hope expires. G. windows are darkened;* when even the lighting down of the grasshopper is a burden on the bending shoulders, and desire itself fails in the listless lethargic soul;-before those heavy hours come, and those tiresome moments draw nigh in which there is too much reason to say, “We have no pleasure in them; no improvement from them.” If their lamps were unfurnished with oil, how unfit must they be, in such decrepit circumstances, to go to the market and buy!+ For, besides a variety of disorders arising from the enfeebled constitution, their corruptions must be surprisingly strengthened by such a long course of irreligion. Evil habits must have struck the deepest root; must have twisted themselves with every fibre of the heart, and be as thoroughly ingrained in the disposition, as the soot in the Ethiopian's complexion, or the spots in the leopard's skin. If such a one, under such disadvantages, surmounts all the difficulties which lie in his way to glory, it must be a great and mighty salvation indeed. If such a one escapes destruction, and is saved at the last, it must, without all peradventure be so as by fire.‡ This is the season which stands in need of comfort, and is very improper to enter upon the conflict. The husbandman should now be putting in his sickle or eating the fruit of his fabors, not beginning to break upon the ground or scatter the seed. Nothing, it is true, is impossible with God: he said, Let there be light, and there was light: instantaneous light, diffused as quick as thought through all the dismal dominion of primeval darkness. At his command a leprosy, of the longest continuance, and of the utmost inveteracy, departs in a moment. He can, in the greatness of his strength,. quicken the wretch, who has lain dead in trespasses and sins, not four days only, but fourscore years. Yet trust not, O trust not, a point of such inexpressible importance to so dread * Eccl. xii. 3, 5. I need not remind my reader, that by the former of these figurative expressions is signified the enervated state of the hands and arms; by the latter, the dimness of the eyes, or the total loss of sight; that taken in connection with other parts of the chapter, they exhibit in a series of bold and lively metaphors, a description of the various infirmities atte dant on old age. Matt. xxy. 9. 1 Cor. iii. 15. |