the wise will prepare for that which is inevitable; and, that there is no peace for the unrighteous at the last hour, no one knows better than the experienced physician; nor will any one more readily fall in with our Saviour's admonitory words," Repent, and sin no more."

I shall never forget the consternation which I once witnessed in a young, lovely, and interesting woman, whose insidious disorder, an affection, as was supposed, of the heart, exhibited, rather unexpectedly to her medical attendants, sure indications of rapidly approaching dissolution. I had been called in as consulting physician, but it nevertheless fell to my lot to communicate to the fastsinking patient her extreme danger, and the probability that that very day might be her last. At that moment there was no external indication of instant death, her countenance was serene, her eye was bright, and more than all, her mind was in possession of its full powers; so as to be able to suggest doubts as to the correctness of what must at first have appeared like a harsh sentence, passed upon her unnecessarily. But the certainty of her being in a dying state was but too evident. Although still in the prime of life, it was but too certain that "The silver cord was loosed"-" The wheel broken at the cistern"—and that the very moments of her existence were numbered. Seeing that I swerved not from my opinion-"O!" she exclaimed, "can it be possible that I am so near death? It never can be; are you sure that I am dying?" "Yes," I said, "I am sure; and may Christ have mercy upon you! Pray to Him who alone can save, for vain is the help of man." She endeavoured to pray; and I have no doubt that her last breath, not very many

hours after, was spent in prayer. Exemplary as I understood her to have been in the tenor of her life, she appeared to me rather as one taken by surprise than unprepared to die; as one, who, in her fright, could take refuge under her merciful Saviour's wings.

Such scenes tempt me to exclaim that an ungodly medical man is a mere monster. Yet I am not at all certain that medical men may not be too meddling about the eternal interests of their patients. Their main business is with the patient's bodily health; and however allowable, or even proper, a word of pious exhortation, or religious comfort, coming seasonably from the heart may be, yet it is for the cure of the body, not the conversion of the soul, that the fee is paid; and where there is hope of recovery, that hope it should be the medical man's endeavour, in all Christian charity, to encourage. In fact sickness seldom fails of bringing serious thoughts with it; and there will not be wanting affectionate friends, and some faithful minister of the Gospel, to turn them to good account. It is a sad deathbed scene indeed where not a ray of religious hope can gain admission,-yet such the physician must be prepared to encounter. He may be called to witness the expiring victim of habitual intemperance; or the last moments of some wretched debauchee, dying, it may be, in the very arms of the frail partner of illicit attachment, with no one near but such as has been more or less the accessory of a life of guilt. Happily such hopeless, heartrending scenes, are comparatively of rare occurrence. Remorse and confusion of face, with an earnest desire, if it were possible, to repent, are the more common character

istics of the reckless last end of the multitude who have taken little thought, amidst the seductions of the world, of the grave and gate of death. At such a time what price would not the despairing sinner be ready to give for his soul! If his religion, such as it is, be that of Protestants, he can have no faith in the operation of Roman masses. That sacred volume in which the case of the penitent thief has been recorded, is his forlorn but only refuge; and fain would he borrow consolation from so stupendous an instance of redeeming sympathy with a fellow participator in the agony of the Cross, as can never be paralleled. Remorse and Faith may do their work, and the accents of a dying penitent will be weighed in the unerring scale of that Being who knows the secrets of all hearts. But whatever hopes, founded on the Redeemer's love, and his atoning blood, Christian charity may kindle, no safe reliance can be put on death-bed repentance,― "Carpe diem!"

"This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise" are words which no mortal ear will ever hear again.

Many years ago, I was sleeping in the house of a patient whose end was drawing nigh, after, and in consequence of, a course of hard drinking. Suddenly I was roused from sleep, and summoned impatiently to his bed. room. There I found him to all appearance a corpse; he had contrived to get out of bed, and placing himself in an upright position, had fainted. He was immediately put back into his bed, and, on recovering the horizontal posture, gave evidence that life was not extinct; insomuch that, soon after, consciousness returned, and, deathstruck as he was, he sustained, for several hours, a con

flict with his ghostly enemy. As far as concerned his worldly affairs, his house had been set in order, and he attempted earnestly to pray; whilst his sister, by his bed-side, gave him all the comfort in her power. Being herself of a serious turn of mind, and familiar with texts expressive of the Redeemer's power and love, she continued to blend them with fervent prayer, till the world again closed, and closed for ever on her little-prepared and late-repentant brother.

The records of death-bed scenes, and those, still more piercing, of the last days and hours of the condemned inmates of our prisons, are without number; but, believing them calculated for the most part to do good, I neither complain of their multitude nor of their circumstantiality, provided only that they come before us detached from the false glare which ignorance and enthusiasm are too apt to throw over them.

What stronger confirmation can be wished of the correctness of this opinion than the words of the "learned and judicious" Hooker? "The death of the saints of

And shall it seem unto us manner they have ended

God is precious in His sight. superfluous to hear in what their lives? The Lord Himself hath not disdained so exactly to register in the Book of Life after what sort His servants have closed up their days on earth, that He descendeth even to their very meanest actions; what meat they have longed for in their sickness; what they have spoken unto their children, kinsfolk, and friends; where they have willed their dead bodies to be laid; how they have framed their wills and testaments; yea, the very turning of their faces to this side or that, the

setting of their eyes, the degrees whereby their natural heat hath departed from them, their cries, their groans, their pantings, breathings, and last accents, He hath most solemnly commended unto the memory of all generations. The care of the living both to live and to die well must needs be somewhat increased, when they know that their departure shall not be folded up in silence, but the ears of many be made acquainted with it. And when they hear how mercifully God hath dealt with others in the hour of their last need, besides the praise which they give to God, and the joy which they have, or should have, by reason of their fellowship and communion of saints, is not their hope so much confirmed against the day of their own dissolution?”*

After the above quotation, it cannot but be interesting to my readers and those who are acquainted with Izaak Walton's lives will be most ready to tender their approval -to see, in the simple heartfelt words of that good old biographer, the manner in which Richard Hooker himself resigned his breath. "The nearer he was to his death, the more he grew in humility, in holy thoughts and resolutions. About a month before his death, this good man, that never knew, or, at least, never considered the pleasures of the palate, became first to lose his appetite, then to have an averseness to all food; insomuch that he seemed to live some intermitted weeks by the smell of meat only; and yet still studied and writ. And now his guardian angel seemed to foretell him that his years were passed away as a shadow, bidding him pre

*Funeral Serm. Is. xiv. 27. Fol. Ed. of his works. Lond. 1723.