never be made to comprehend that she was dead; but spent his life in the vain search for the lost object of his love. In most affecting terms he would mourn her absence, and chide her long delay. Thus life wore away; and when its ebbing tide was almost exhausted, starting as from a long and unbroken revery, the countenance of the dying man was overspread with sudden joy, and stretching forth his arms, as if he would clasp some object before him, he uttered the name of his long-lost love, and exclaiming, "Ah, there thou art at last!" expired. The aged Hannah More, in her dying agony, stretching out her arms as though she would grasp some object, uttered the name of a much-loved deceased sister, cried "Joy!" and then sank down into the arms of death.

We are far, however, from thinking, with the poet philosopher, Young, that

"Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die."

For instances are not wanting which afford striking illustrations of Pope's "ruling passion strong in death." Thus the dying warrior, when life and animation are almost extinct, may exclaim, "One charge more, my braves," and then sink in the conflict with his last foe. The cold speculatist, whose very heart has become seared and frozen by the ungenial abstractions that have puzzled and bewildered the intellect, dying, may still be absorbed in the thought, "I am now going to satisfy my curiosity on the principle of things, on space, on infinity, on being, on nothing." The drunkard, brought by dissipation to life's last hour, may resolve with his latest breath to "curse God and die drunk." The miser— who can better describe his "ruling passion" than Pope, himself?

"I give and I devise,' old Enclio said,

And sigh'd, my lands and tenements to Ned.'

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 finelyturned and beautiful neck, just before her execution said to the lieutenant of the Tower, "I hear that the executioner 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 committed 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 Voltaire, 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.