ment, or even in the attitude and in the depository of the dead, there and thus to die. With a more subdued and tranquil observance of accustomed forms, the celebrated Father Paul Sarpi folded his hands upon his bosom in the shape of a cross, and so expired; and in the same attitude the aged Bishop Jolly, of the Scottish Episcopal Church, was found alone and dead. Like Monica, the mother of Augustine, many have asked the prayers of survivors for their souls when they should be gone; and, in later times, it has been with indistinct and disturbed apprehensions of their need of such intercessions. A certain gloom, more or less intense, may shade the path even of the honest and safe believer, when he has become subjected to the influence of an unscriptural system.

The rigidness of one form of Christian thought and custom, and the warmth of another; the habit of meek submissiveness, and that of eager, affectionate obedience, are seen in their effects to the last. These effects may be united with peculiar traits of temperament; and such traits may incline the mind to one or another view of questions which have been variously regarded by Christians, or to one or another mode of habitual devotion. Charles the First went with calm dignity to the scaffold, after listening to the morning lessons of the Church of England, which, on that day of the calendar, related the crucifixion of our Saviour. Oliver Cromwell, if he can be named amongst those who have died in faith, is said to have strengthened himself in the time of death by recourse to his conviction that he had once been an heir of grace, and to the opinion that an heir of grace could never fall quite away. Some, like Bishop Bull, like Brentius, and like the pious Dr. Bedell, have solemnly affirmed what they

had held, or taught, or written, even though their several doctrines may have somewhat differed. Others have even laid upon those whom they left behind, the solemn charge of dying persons, that they should never forsake the doctrine or communion to which they had themselves adhered in death. A lady of my acquaintance, whose piety was fervid, and was joined with a warm imagination, uttered in her last hours the hope that she might be permitted, if it were possible, to hold some guardian influence over an infant child just born into her family circle.

Every portion of the Christian church has furnished to the believer some means of solace and refreshment for his last warfare. From the days of the apostles, the elders have been summoned to pray at his bedside. Prayers and hymns for the chamber of death, and for the use of the dying themselves, are found in liturgical books and manuals of devotion, especially in those of Germany. The Holy Communion has been, by a custom very general in Christendom, the crowning preparation for the passage. So dearly has it been prized, that one of the martyrs under Queen Mary, a layman, made in his prison such arrangements as he could, and, praying that, as far as might be possible, his participation in the elements before him might be to him the enjoyment of the Lord's Supper, went thus to his crown with an invigorated spirit. The great Schleiermacher, in his last moments, sat up in his bed and administered to his friends and himself this sacrament of faith. It has been sometimes a relief to pour into the breast of a spiritual guide some special confession, and to receive the authoritative declaration of absolution on the supposition of true penitence; a declaration which cannot increase the real certainty of forgiveness, but

only confirm the inward conviction of those whose heart condemns them not; and thus it is permitted by Protestant churches. The abuse of such aids may be serious and frequent; but nowhere does the Christian minister more feel his need to lean directly on the words of Scripture and the ordinances of Christ, and on the collective piety and experience of the universal church, than in the presence of death, and under the knowledge that scarcely a few days or hours are left for all which his labours can impart. If he sees, as he must, the influence of peculiar modes of thought and belief, or of various ecclesiastical usages and systems, in giving a tone and hue to the hope which triumphs at such a season, so much the more must he bless the lot which enables him to speak simply there the words of Holy Writ, to offer the prayers which have been uttered by innumerable saints, and to administer the cup of redeeming grace at the command of the Redeemer.

LI.

Diversity in Christian Death, from Temperament and Disease.

WE can conceive that the transforming grace of God might, in life and in death, remove or suppress every influence of natural peculiarities or accidental associations; but such is not its custom. Sometimes, indeed, the most marked traits of the original outline seem quite to disappear, and the timid become undaunted, and the harsh have the meekness of little children. But, except where these natural traits have been very closely allied to such as were decidedly moral, the man has generally retained to the last much of that mental individuality which has such a colouring effect on the pure light of piety. This individuality gives to many a Christian death-bed a character quite distinct from that of others as evidently Christian.

John Newton and Thomas Scott were friends, and held the same doctrines; but the Christian life and death of Newton were like the balmy air of June; those of Scott like the bracing and often chilly breezes of November. Payson, nervous, imaginative, eloquent, variable, passed, at the approach of death, from many

a long valley of humiliation, if not from the precincts of the fortress of despair, far up into what he termed the land of Beulah," and the "delectable mountains." The pensive poet, Wilcox, struggled with fears at the very close. "I have some hope," he said; "pray for me that I may not be deceived; all my hope is in the promises of God in Christ Jesus." Bishop Dehon, dying still young, yet, after a life of patriarchal pureness from his youth, breathed forth, as almost his last words, "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!" and then, as his temper had always been lovely, "lay silent, with great loveliness in his eyes." Simeon, whose peculiar cast of mind had always prompted quaintness of expression and even an unusual enjoyment of the ludicrous, throughout a life of almost unsurpassed zeal and usefulness, carried this with him into his chamber of death; and said in his own way, just before he expired, "Do you see any sting here?" A most learned and conscientious man, Bishop Burgess of Salisbury, but of an unimaginative mind, said, in his last illness, "Oh, what a comfort there is in looking to Christ! I scarcely like to speak of looking to the cross; that is figurative; I want something substantial." On the other hand, Tasso, in the monastery where his closing days were spent in prayer, died clasping a crucifix; and multitudes of saints have delighted to have the image of the cross before the eye of the spirit in the act of departing.

An influence, like that of the natural temperament or of accidental associations, may be also ascribed to the character of particular diseases. Some, like paralysis, weakening the nerves, weaken also the power of self-control, and sometimes cause an appearance of great depression. Others, with the remedies which are