Jesus Christ speaks no new or foreign language to him; it is the language of his heart: they are the sentiments of his whole life. Nothing soothes him so much, then, as to hear that God spoken of whom he had always loved; those eternal riches, which he had always coveted; that happiness of another life, for which he had always sighed; and the nothingness of that world which he had always despised. All other subjects of conversation become insipid to him; he can listen only to the mercies of the God of his fathers, and he regrets the moments as lost, which must necessarily be devoted to the regulation of an earthly mansion and the succession of his ancestors. Great God! what knowledge! what peace! what delicious transports! what holy emotions of love, of joy, of confidence, of thanksgiving, then fill the soul of this righteous character! His faith is renewed; his love is invigorated; his fervour is excited; his compunction is awakened. The nearer the dissolution of the earthly man approaches, the more is the new man completed and perfected! The more his mansion of clay crumbles, the more is his soul purified and exalted! In proportion as the body falls into ruin, the spirit is disengaged and renewed; like a pure and brilliant flame, which ascends and shines forth with additional splendour, in proportion as it disengages itself from the remains of matter which held it down, and as the substance to which it was attached is consumed and dissipated.
Alas! all discourses upon God fatigue the sinner on the bed of death: they irritate his evils; his head suffers by them, and his rest is disturbed. It becomes necessary to manage his weakness, by venturing only a few words at proper periods; to do it with precaution, lest their length should incommode him; to choose the moments for speaking to him of the God who is ready to judge him, and whom he has never known. Holy artifices of charity are required, nay deception is even necessary sometimes, to make him bestow a thought upon his salvation. Even the ministers of the church but rarely approach him, because they well know that their presence is only an intrusion. They are excluded as disagreeable and melancholy prophets; his friends around him carefully turn the conversation from salvation, as conveying the news of death, and as a dismal subject which wearies him; they endeavour to enliven his spirits by relating the affairs and vanities of the age, which had engrossed him during life. Great God! and thou permittest that this unfortunate wretch should bear, even to death, his dislike to truth; that worldly images shall still occupy him in this last moment; and that they shall dread to speak to him of his God whom he has always dreaded to serve and to know!
But let us not lose sight of the faithful soul. Not only he sees nothing on the bed of death which surprises him, but he is likewise separated from nothing which he laments or regrets. For what can death separate him from to occasion either regret or tears? From the world? Alas! from a world in which he had always lived as an exile; in which he had found only shameful excesses which grieved his faith; rocks, at which his innocence
