A CONTRAST.

levity and indifWho can leave

THERE is something awfully real in death; ference are most unseemly at that moment. all he has loved on earth; who can have the ties rent asunder which made life precious; who can enter on a new state of which he has no experimental knowledge, without the most solemn reflections, unless conscience has been previously hardened by unbelief? This is generally the moment for confession and truth; the real sentiments of the soul are exposed The motives for concealment, evasion, or pretended indifference, cease to exist; and the expiring tongue declares the fears or hopes, the miseries or joys of the departing spirit This, then, is the time for the trial of those systems on which we have rested our hopes of salvation. If our theory will not support us then, it is worthless, because the hour of death is the period in our history in which we need most support and consolation. Well, the systems of Infidelity and the doctrines of Christianity have both been tested at that moment; let us see with what result.

Some infidels have manifested the greatest insensibility and presumption in their last hours; as if they were either utterly callous to every thing which relates to them as accountable creatures, or were daring the Almighty to his face after labouring to subvert his authority. When Hobbes drew near to death, he declared," I am about to take a leap in the dark;" and the last sensible words that he uttered were, 66 I shall be glad to find a hole to creep out of the world at." And although Rousseau had pretended to doubt the very existence of God, and lived in unbridled licentiousness and vice, he presumptuously claimed the favour of his Creator, expiring with the most impious appeal ever made to the Divine Being. A short time before he departed, he said to his wife or mistress," Ah!

my dear, how happy a thing it is to die when one has no reason for remorse or self-reproach !" And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said, "Eternal Being! the soul that I am going to give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee; render it partaker of thy felicity!" Nature, conscience, the slightest moral feeling, compel one to declare that such states of mind are exceedingly unfit for a death-bed.

How opposite to this the seriousness and humility of the judicious Hooker; a man far superior to both in all the powers of his mind, as well as in all the moral and religious endowments of the heart! His last words were, "I have lived to see this world is made up of perturbation, and I have been long preparing to leave it, and have been gathering comfort for the dreadful hour of making up my account with God, which I now apprehend to be near; and though I have by his grace loved him in my youth, and feared him in mine age, and laboured to have a conscience void of offence to him and to all men, yet if thou, Lord, be extreme to mark what I have done amiss, who can abide it? And therefore where I have failed, Lord, show mercy to me; for I plead not my righteousness, but the forgiveness of my unrighteousness, for His merit who died to purchase a pardon for penitent sinners."

Other infidels have exhibited the utmost trifling in the awful hour, as if dying were the most unimportant event in their history. Hume, when near his end, amused himself by joking about Charon and his crazy boat, and being carried over the fabled Styx by the ferryman of hell. Levity and satire occupied his discourse, while trifling dissipation, even games at whist, filled the intervals. The retouching of his infidel writings was his employment, and his essay on suicide,-in which he encourages a profane and irreligious age to this last miserable act of presumption and despair,-was finished on his deathbed. Dr. Johnson observes upon this impenitent death-bed scene:-" Hume owned that he had never read the New Testament with attention. Here, then, was a man who had been at no pains to inquire into the truth of religion, and had continually turned his mind the other way. It was not to be expected that the prospect of a death-bed should alter his way of thinking, unless God should send an angel to set him right."

Come with me to the death-bed of Payson, a man whose intellect and integrity far excelled Hume's. See him tortured with convulsions and racked with pain,-yet fearless, humble, resigned, joyful, and even triumphant. To some young men

whom he had invited to visit him he said, "My young friends, you will all one day be obliged to embark on the same voyage on which I am just embarking; and as it has been my special employment during my past life to recommend to you a Pilot to guide you through this voyage, I wish to tell you what a precious pilot he is, that you may be induced to choose him for yours. I feel desirous that you might see that the religion I have preached can support me in death. You know that I have many ties which bind me to earth,-a family to which I am strongly attached, and the people, whom I love almost as well; but the other world acts like a magnet, and draws my heart away from this. Death comes every night and stands by my bedside in the form of terrible convulsions, every one of which threatens to separate the soul from the body. These continue to grow worse and worse, until every bone is almost dissolved with pain, leaving me with the certainty that I shall have it all to endure again the next night. Yet while my body is thus tortured, the soul is perfectly-perfectly happy and peaceful-more happy than I can possibly express to you. I lie here and feel these convulsions extending higher and higher, without the least uneasiness; but my soul is filled with joy unspeakable. I seem to revive in a flood of glory which God pours down upon me. And I know, I know that my happiness is but begun; I cannot doubt that it will last for ever. And now is all this a delusion? Is it a delusion which can fill the soul to overflowing with joy in such circumstances? If so, it is surely a delusion better than any reality; but no, it is not a delusion; I feel that it is not: I do not merely know that I shall enjoy all this-I enjoy it now.

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My young friends, were I master of the whole world, what could it do for me like this? Were all its wealth at my feet, and all its inhabitants striving to make me happy, what could they do for me? Nothing! nothing! Now, all this happiness I trace back to the religion which I have preached, and to the time when that great change took place in my heart, which I have often told you is necessary to salvation; and now I tell you again, that without this change you cannot, no, you cannot, see the kingdom of God. And now, standing as I do on the ridge which separates the two worlds; feeling what intense happiness or misery the soul is capable of sustaining, judging of your capacities by my own, and believing that those capacities will be filled to the very brim with joy or wretchedness for ever; can it be wondered at that my heart yearns over you, my children, that you may choose

life and not death? Is it to be wondered at that I long to present every one of you with a full cup of happiness, and see you drink it; that I long to have you make the same choice which I made, and from which springs all my happiness?

"A young man just about to leave this world, exclaimed, 'The battle's fought! the battle's fought! the battle's fought! but the victory is lost for ever!' But I can say, The battle's fought, and victory is won!—the victory is won for ever. I am going to bathe in an ocean of purity, and benevolence, and happiness to all eternity. And now, my children, let me bless you; not with the blessing of a poor, feeble, dying man, but with the blessing of the infinite God. The grace of God, and the love of Christ, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with all and each one of you for ever and ever! Amen."

At one time he was heard to break forth in the following soliloquy What an assemblage of motives to holiness does the gospel present! I am a Christian.-What then? Why, I am a redeemed sinner, a pardoned rebel, all through grace, and by the most wonderful means which infinite wisdom could devise. I am a Christian.-What then? Why, I am a temple of God, and surely I ought to be pure and holy. I am a Christian.-What then? I am a child of God, and ought to be filled with filial love, reverence, joy, and gratitude. I am a Christian.—What then? Why, I am a disciple of Christ, and must imitate him who was meek and lowly in heart, and pleased not himself. I am a Christian.— What then? Why, I am an heir of heaven, and hastening to the abodes of the blessed, to join the full choir of glorified ones, in singing the song of Moses and the Lamb; and surely I ought to learn that song on earth.”

A few days before his death some of the choir belonging to the congregation came, for the purpose of singing, for his gratification, some of the songs of Zion. He selected the one commencing

"Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,

Thy better portion trace," &c.

My readers, which death would you choose-that of Hume or Payson? Remember, then, that infidelity led to the former, and Christianity to the latter.

Nor has it been uncommon for infidels in their last moments to exhibit regret and despair. Behold the champion of Infidelity, whom revolutionary France delighted to honour! What were the last days of Voltaire? He had been crowned

with glory amidst the acclamations of an infatuated assembly in the theatre, and in his return thence was visited by the messenger of death, who inflicted his fatal blow. D'Alembert, Diderot, and Marmontel hastened to support his last moments, but were only witnesses to their mutual ignominy, as well as to his own. Often would he curse them, and exclaim, "Retire! It is you that have brought me to my present state! Begone! I could have done without you all, but you could not exist without me. And what a wretched glory have you procured me!" To appease the distraction of his conscience, he wrote to the Abbé Gaultier, entreating him to visit him, and in a few days thereafter he penned the following declaration :

"I, the underwritten, declare, that for these four days. past, having been afflicted with a vomiting of blood, at the age of eighty-four, and not having been able to drag myself to the church-the Rev. the Rector of St. Sulpice having been pleased to add to his good works that of sending to me the Abbé Gaultier, a priest, I confessed to him,—and if it pelase God to dispose of me, I die in the holy Catholic church, in which I was born; hoping that the Divine mercy will deign to pardon all my faults. If ever I have scandalized the church, I ask pardon of God and of the church. March the 2d, 1778.

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Signed, VOLTAIRE, in the presence of the Abbé Mignot, my nephew, and the Marquis de Villevieille, my friend." Alternately he blasphemed and supplicated God, and in plaintive accents he would frequently cry out, "O Christ! O Jesus Christ!" as if he saw the sentence with which he had subscribed his epistles in fiery letters before him. The Marshal de Richelieu, his companion in infidelity, flew from the bedside, declaring it to be a sight too terrible to be sustained. Dr. Tronchain, thunder-struck, retired, declaring that the death of the impious man was terrible indeed, and that the furies of Orestes could give but a faint idea of those of Voltaire. And the nurse who attended him, being many years afterwards requested to wait on a sick Protestant gentleman, refused, till she was assured he was not a philosopher; declaring that, if he were, she would on no account incur the danger of witnessing such a scene as she had been compelled to do at the death of Voltaire. Thus you see rage, remorse, reproach, and blasphemy, accompanying and characterising the long agony of the dying infidel.

The last moments of Paine were equally awful and distressing. When his infidel companions said to him, “You