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of his faith, and his trust in the merits and propitiation of Jesus Christ." He was full of resignation, strong in faith, joyful in hope of his own salvation, and anxious for the salvation of his friends. He particularly exhorted Sir Joshua Reynolds, on his dying bed, "to read the Bible, and to keep holy the Sabbath-day."

10. A DYING NOBLEMAN.

"On my grassy grave

The men of future times will careless tread,
And read my name on sculptured stone;
Nor will the sound, familiar to their ears,
Recall my vanish'd memory. I did hope
For better things!—I hoped I should not leave
The earth without a vestige;-Fate decrees
It shall be otherwise."-KIRKE WHITE.

THE following letter, written by a nobleman upon his death-bed to an intimate companion, is a deeply affecting and mornful commentary upon the consequences of the neglect of religion and a prevailing spirit of worldliIn this letter, he says:—

ness.

"Before you receive this, my final state will be determined by the Judge of all the earth. In a few days at most, perhaps in a few hours, the inevitable sentence will be passed that shall raise me to the heights of happiness, or sink me to the depths of misery. While you read. these lines, I shall be either groaning under the agonies of absolute despair, or triumphing in fulness of joy.

"It is impossible for me to express the present dis position of my soul-the vast uncertainty I am struggling with! No words can paint the force and vivacity of my apprehensions. Every doubt wears the face of horror, and would perfectly overwhelm me, but for some faint beams of hope, which dart across the tremendous

gloom! What tongue can utter the anguish of a soul suspended between the extremes of infinite joy and eternal misery? I am throwing my last stake for eternity, and tremble and shudder for the important event.

"Good God! how have I employed myself! What enchantment hath held me? In what delirium hath my life been passed? What have I been doing, while the sun in its race, and the stars in their courses, have lent their beams, perhaps, only to light me to perdition.

"I never awakened till now. I have but just commenced the dignity of a rational being. Till this instant I had a wrong apprehension of everything in nature. I have pursued shadows, and entertained myself with dreams. I have been treasuring up dust, and sporting myself with the wind. I look back on my past life, and but for some memorials of guilt and infamy, it is all a blank-a perfect vacancy! I might have grazed with the beasts of the field, or sung with the winged inhabitants in the woods to much better purpose, than any for which I have lived. And O! but for some faint hope, a thousand times more blessed had I been to have slept with the clods of the valley, and never heard the Almighty's fiat, nor waked into life at his command!

“I never had a just apprehension of the solemnity of the part I am to act till now. I have often met death insulting on the hostile plain, and, with a stupid boast, defied his terrors; with a courage, as brutal as that of the warlike horse, I have rushed into the battle, laughed at the glittering spear, and rejoiced at the sound of the trumpet, nor had a thought of any state beyond the grave, nor the great tribunal to which I must have been summoned ;

"Where all my secret guilt had been reveal'd,

Nor the minutest circumstance conceal'd.

"It is this which arms death with all its terrors; else

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I could still mock at fear, and smile in the face of the gloomy monarch. It is not giving up my breath; it is not being forever insensible, 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. My awakened conscience feels something of that eternal vengeance I have often defied.

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"To what heights of madness is it possible for human nature to reach? What extravagance is it to jest with death! to laugh at damnation! to sport with eternal chains, and recreate a jovial fancy with the scenes of infernal misery!

"Were there no impiety in this kind of mirth, it would be as ill-bred as to entertain a dying friend with the sight of a harlequin, or the rehearsal of a farce. Every thing in nature seems to reproach this levity in human creatures. The whole creation, man excepted, is serious-man, who has the highest reason to be so, while he has affairs of infinite consequence depending on this short uncertain duration. 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.

"O! my friend, with what horror do I recall those hours of vanity we have wasted together! Return, ye lost neglected moments! How should I prize you above the eastern treasures! Let me dwell with hermits, let me rest on the cold earth, let me converse in cottages, may I but once more stand a candidate for an immortal crown, and have my probation for celestial happiness.

"Ye vain grandeurs of a court! Ye sounding titles, and perishing riches! what do ye now signify? What consolation, what relief can ye give me? I have a

splendid passage to the grave; I die in state, and languish under a gilded canopy; I am expiring on soft and downy pillows, and am respectfully attended by my servants and physicians; my dependents sigh, my sisters. weep; my father bends beneath a load of years and grief; my lovely wife, pale and silent, conceals her inward anguish; my friend, who was as my own soul, suppresses his sighs, and leaves me to hide his secret grief. But, O! which of these will answer my summons at the high tribunal? Which of them will bail me from the arrest of death? Who will descend into the dark prison of the grave for me?

"Here they all leave me, after having paid a few idle ceremonies to the breathless clay, which perhaps may lie reposed in state, while my soul, my only conscious part, may stand trembling before my Judge.

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'My afflicted friends, it is very probable, with great solemnity will lay the senseless corpse in a stately monument, inscribed with,

Here lies the great

But could the pale carcass speak, it would soon reply,

-False marble, where?

Nothing but poor and sordid dust lies here.

While some flattering panegyric is pronounced at my interment, I may perhaps be hearing my just condemnation at a superior tribunal, where an unerring verdict may sentence me to everlasting infamy. But I cast myself on his absolute mercy, through the infinite merits of the Redeemer of lost mankind. Adieu, till we meet in the world of spirits."

Part Second.

DYING WITHOUT RELIGION.

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