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he had visited at least 2,000 persons, who having, in what they deemed the near approach of death, declared their solemn purposes of amendment in the event of their restoration to health, had been mercifully spared; but of the whole 2,000, he had not reason to believe that more than six or ten fulfilled the vows which they had made. Does not such a testimony suggest at least the possibility that many death-bed repentances, which have appeared most satisfactory and sincere, may have been delusive after all? Does it not also address a solemn warning to those who may be disposed to trust to such a repentance, lest theirs should prove delusive too?

"Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation!" Mercy invites you now. You can never be more welcome than at this hour. And you need the blessings of the gospel, not only to prepare you for judgment and for heaven, but to make you truly happy here. Resolve, then, that this shall be your convenient season, and that you will now seek, with all your heart, salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hasten, O sinner! to be wise,

And stay not for the morrow's sun;
The longer wisdom you despise,
The harder is she to be won.

O hasten, sinner, to return,

And stay not for the morrow's sun,
For fear thy lamp should fail to burn,
Before the needful work is done.

O Lord, do thou the sinner turn!
Nor let him stay the morrow's sun;

O may he not thy counsel spurn,

But haste, deserved wrath to shun.

J. F. SHAW, BOOKSELLER, SOUTHAMPTON ROW, AND
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON:

AND W. INNES, BOOKSELLER, SOUTH HANOVER STREET, EDINBURGH.

London: J. & W. RIDER, Printers, 14, Bartholomew Close.

A VERY powerful sensation was excited in the metropolis a short time ago, by the mournful intelligence of the sudden death of Lord Viscount Jocelyn, eldest son of the Earl of Roden, and M.P. for King's Lynn. His lordship, who was in the prime of life, only 38 years of age, and, it is also said, a man of vigorous constitution, was attacked with Asiatic cholera, whilst fulfilling his duties at the Tower, on the 11th of August, as colonel of the Essex Rifles. He was immediately removed to the house of his relative, Lord Palmerston, where every possible attention was promptly paid him. The resources of medical skill, however, proved unavailing, and in a few hours he sunk beneath the virulence of the disease. At half-past one on the following morning he was no more.

An event like this-the removal of a nobleman so well known, and so much esteemed, the heir of an earldom, and a member of the legislature of our land, could scarcely fail in any circumstances to arrest much attention. But the manner of his death, occasioned as it was by that terrible scourge, which seems now to be a periodical visitant to our shores, is especially calculated to appeal to all hearts with startling power. It proclaims, with a voice not to be mistaken, that the pestilence is once more in our midst, and it proclaims too that though its ravages have been especially fatal in the haunts of vice and squalid poverty, there are none, however elevated in social position, who are beyond its reach.

It is not too much to believe that this solemn event has produced deep alarm in many a heart, which has been unmoved by previous visitations of the kind; and that it is forced upon them, as at least a possible thing, that they themselves might be summoned as suddenly into the presence of their Judge.

You are

Beloved reader, this may be the case with you. afraid to die. And no wonder, for there is much in death to appal the stoutest heart-much from which men have always shrunk back in dismay. That was quite true which Satan said respecting Job, "Skin for skin, yea all that a man hath will he give for his life." Many a dying man has offered his physician all his fortune, if he could only avert from him the stroke of mortality. Poverty, disgrace, exile, and in short every imaginable evil, have been preferred to dissolution. Who is not conscious of this fear? Let there be felt the

probability of death, and what alarm it causes! what a chill it strikes to the heart! and how immediately the inquiry arises, and how anxiously is that inquiry prosecuted, "Is there nothing I can do to avert this calamity?"

"There is no

It cannot be averted. As the wise man says, discharge in that war." The king of terrors may allow his victim a brief respite; but he only departs for a season, awaiting him a few steps further on in his journey, and then brooking no delay.

But though death itself cannot be escaped, its bitterness may be done away. We can show you how this may be accomplished, and how you may be enabled to meet the last enemy with composure and joy. Can there be a subject fraught with deeper interest than this to a responsible and immortal being? Let us first, however, glance at some of these circumstances which render death an object of dread.

Death is commonly preceded by weakness and suffering, and the act of dissolution itself is in many cases accomplished by a most agonising and terrible struggle. In these circumstances, there is to be found not a little of the bitterness of death. Men tremble as they anticipate their last and fatal sickness, and that conflict by which life is to be closed. Were there nothing more than this, they would shrink back from death. Even an inspired apostle felt it a desirable thing that, if possible, it might be avoided. "Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life."

Death also involves a final separation from all that is earthly. It happens too frequently, that this world is all, and that the man has not the slightest care for anything beyond, or the least idea of anything in another world, which can compensate the loss of the present. And they who have something beyond, have numerous powerful ties on earth, which cannot be rent without much anguish. We have seen the youthful die. The blooming maiden, on whom life was opening with so much promise, and to whom it had already ministered so much enjoyment; who was admired, courted, and praised; who was the light of the household in which she lived, and the pride and joy of her parents, was smitten by that insidious disease, which, in this clime of ours, bears yearly to the tomb thousands of the brightest and the best. She felt it hard to die, to leave this beautiful world, and to bid farewell to the friends she loved, and when at last they told her there was no hope, the tears she shed, and the changing hues of her wasted cheek, told plainly how much bitterness there was in the thought of death. We have seen men die in the fullness of their strength

and the maturity of life, and it was manifestly a bitter thing to relinquish purposes but half fulfilled, and to leave behind them in the world those who were even dearer than life. We have heard of men dying on whom Providence had conferred large possessions and distinguished honours; dying too when there seemed every probability that they would be long spared to enjoy them; and there is on record many an utterance of such men, expressive of deep disappointment and agony, when they knew they must die. It was a just remark of Dr. Johnson, when Garrick had shown him his splendidly furnished house, “Ah, David! these are the things that make a death bed terrible."

But the chief source of the bitterness of death remains. If men were sure that death was the termination of their being -if they could think that true, which was inscribed above the gates of the cemeteries in France, during the time of the Revolution, "Death is an eternal sleep;" however they might abhor the thought of sinking into annihilation, there would not be nearly so much of bitterness about death as there is. Multitudes would then welcome it with gladness, who now shrink back from it in dismay. Still less would it be feared, if it could be regarded as only a transition to another state of being, superior or even equal to the present. But there is the doubt.

"The dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns,-puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of."

There is deeply infixed in the human soul the persuasion that it is immortal, and connected with that persuasion is the belief of its accountability. The present is held to be a state of probation-the future, a state of doom. Now there is in

the hearts of almost all a sense of sin, more or less clearly defined, which makes men afraid of entering on the realities of eternity. They know that death ushers them into the presence of a Judge from whom they have little expectation save of punishment and wrath, and therefore they fear to die. "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law." It is the thought of unpardoned sin which gives its greatest bitterness to death. When may

How then may death be divested of its terror? it be said, "The bitterness of death is past." There was one by whom those words were uttered. The captive king of Amalek might mean by them that he thought Saul would not now take away his life, or perhaps, that there was nothing left which could render life desirable. For his crown was in the

dust, his possessions were gone, his family had been slain, and therefore he spoke as though he did not care to live. "The bitterness of death is past" in part, when there are endured sufferings that render life a burden. Many a one so tortured has exclaimed, in passionate earnestness, "Let me die, let me die! I can bear this anguish no longer!" It is past in part, when there is no longer the power of enjoyment. What matters it, though a man have at his command all the luxuries in the world, if he cannot enjoy them? What are sweet sounds to the deaf, or beautiful pictures to the blind, or costly viands to him whose power of taste is irretrievably gone? If again, all a man's property be lost, and one by one his friends who loved him have died, and those who cared for him only in the sunshine of his prosperity have left him, can you wonder if you hear him say, like Jonah, "It is better for me to die than to live?"

Still the combination of all these-suffering, incapacity of enjoyment, loneliness and desertion, only take away a small part of the real bitterness of death. They cancel no guilt, and they confer no meetness for heaven. What then is necessary, in order to enable us to say with truth, "It is all past?" We will endeavour to answer the inquiry.

That man may say so, in whom the following things conspire :

There must be first of all, through Jesus Christ, the consciousness of pardoned sin. We have already seen, that it is the persuasion of sinfulness which imparts its greatest terribleness to death. If we know, then, that we are no longer liable to the curse of God, and that we do not pass into his presence only to be condemned for ever, the ground of our greatest dread is removed. Anything else is of trifling moment compared with this. Now it was the design of the death of Christ to secure for us pardon. He drank the bitter cup of death, that we might be spared its bitterness. He died as our substitute. "He bore our sins in his own body on the tree.” In the second chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, the apostle Paul represents the death of Christ as the great means by which death itself is destroyed, and men delivered from its fear. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." So also in the close of that sublime discourse on the resurrection, in the 15th chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, he

THE ENGLISH MONTHLY TRACT SOCIETY, 27, RED LION SQUARE, LONDON.

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