single circumstance of calmness in death is to determine the sufficiency of a person's religious belief, heathenism itself will not be without its triumphs, and all the calm and heroic deaths of classical antiquity must henceforth be narrated as proofs of the adequacy of the systems beneath whose influence they originated. Had this calmness been connected with a due knowledge and belief, the case would have been far more relevant and convincing.

It would be, perhaps, considered as a somewhat harsh assertion, though it is perfectly true, that the deaths of a large portion of professed Christians are tranquil only on the very same grounds as those of many heathens were tranquil also. Men are oftentimes accustomed to bring forward the generic rather than the specific idea of piety. In proof of this remark, it is by no means unusual to find professedly Christian writers selecting examples of happy deaths almost indiscriminately from heathens, heretics, and true believers, with, perhaps, scarcely a single warning to point out the important specific differences between the religious systems of the various persons whose characters are discussed. Thus, under one generic name, we are told of the pious and happy death of Cyrus, or Socrates, or some other favorite of antiquity, in nearly the same terms which are elsewhere employed to characterize that of a Christian martyr or apostle. The features which are common to all are minutely pourtrayed, while those which are peculiar to the latter are overlooked. It is the frame of mind simply considered, and not as connected with Christian truth, that excites their attention. The marked and important difference, not merely between the hopes of these classes of persons, but also between the grounds on which those hopes depend, is quite overlooked amidst the spurious Catholicism of a universal creed. The worshipper of Jehovah and of Jove are placed side by side; and because the one found in an

awful ignorance of his moral condition that calm which the other derived from a well-founded hope in his Redeemer, it is predicted of both alike that they expired in piety and peace.

It would however be very probably urged by the objector in return, that his argument was intended to apply solely to professed Christians. He would, perhaps, allow that in a heathen, or even in a vicious man, a peaceful death must of course be connected with a considerable degree of ignorance or unbelief; but he would add, that where the individual was a baptized person, and there existed no particular viciousness of character, calmness in death, even though unconnected with any peculiar reliance on the atonement of Christ, would be nevertheless not a deceitful but a rational and well-founded repose, grounded on general views of the Creator's mercy, though not specifically dependent upon any idea of the merits and propitiation of the Redeemer.

Here then we return to the precise point of controversy; and in every view of the subject it is far from being an idle speculation; for if what is currently applauded and envied as an easy and hopeful death, be in truth oftentimes nothing more than the natural consequence of ignorance or infidelity, or both in conjunction, nothing surely can be more evident than the necessity of careful self-examination, in order that our tranquillity in dissolution may not be followed by a far more dreadful death than the one whose terrors we had thoughtlessly despised.

How often do we hear it remarked respecting persons the most heedless and irreligious, that "he died like a lamb."-He died like a lamb! Impossible, if in the full possession of his mental faculties he seriously contemplated his Maker and himself, as they are both exhibited in Scripture, without at the same time taking fully into his account the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Impossible, if he adequately saw and felt

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the disease without being enabled to apply the remedy. Impossible, if he knew and believed his guilt, without reposing by faith in Him who alone can take away the sin of the world. If dying ignorant of Christ Jesus, he died in comfort, or at least in what unjustly bears that name, he could not assuredly credit the denunciations of Divine wrath; or, believing them, did not see how justly they applied to himself. Here then existed some degree of ignorance or unbelief; and, in fact, there is no subject upon which men in general, even in a Christian country, are so skeptical as on that of their own personal sinfulness and spiritual inability. If they do not discredit altogether the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, they are at least ignorant or unbelieving respecting their own individual demerits, and consequently expect, what the Almighty has no where promised to grant, that their contaminated and imperfect righteousness shall be found worthy of curing their admission into heaven. But if they really felt, with the true members of the church, that "there is no health in them," nothing short of a scriptural knowledge of the great Physician of souls could possibly calm their apprehensions. If they seriously believed that eternal punishment is their desert by nature, they could venture to cherish no hope of heaven but by the free grace of Christ. The expectation of the end without any reference to the only means is evidently a serious error; or if, in order to supply this defect, the means are supposed to consist in human merit and human works, that very ignorance is incidentally betrayed the existence of which it was the object of the present argument to prove. To know Revelation justly includes in its very elements the knowledge of our being by nature in a situation so guilty and alarming that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission."

It is true that hardness of heart, and the other causes which have been already enumerated, may con

duce to a false peace; but the means by which they operate are undoubtedly connected with the encouragement of latent ignorance, or infidelity; for were the whole subject fully understood and credited, who would be able to harden his heart, or proudly to cherish an unfounded confidence? To discern accurately and believe fully would create in the dying sinner much the same mental feelings as those which he must necessarily experience at the last day, when knowledge and conviction shall both irresistibly flash upon his conscience. The awfulness of his condition will not be in itself more alarming a million of years hence than it is at the moment of dissolution, and the only reason why it will affect the mind in a more powerful and impressive manner is, that he will then be permitted no longer to fortify his heart either by misconception or skeptical indifference. Satiety and disappointment, equability of nerve and philosophical pride, with all those other causes which have been mentioned in a preceding extract,* would have no power to make a sinner really calm in death, were they not combined with some secret ignorance or doubt respecting the certainty of that eternal punishment which his sins have incurred.

The case of our great English moralist is a most decisive illustration of the impossibility of discovering any mode of solacing a scripturally enlightened conscience except that which the Gospel has revealed. Had Dr. Johnson been ignorant of his sinfulness in the sight of God, he might have expired, as thousands every day expire, in a blind and fatal repose; or had he been inclined to infidelity, he might have jested, like Hume and others of a similar school, on the subject of his approaching dissolution. Neither, however, of these effects would have constituted that true peace which his spiritually directed mind so eagerly sought, and which, before his death, he most certainly obtained. Page 4.

A few practical remarks upon the subject of the last hours of this illustrious man will not only be a forcible comment upon the foregoing propositions, but will tend to show that what Dr. Johnson's best biographers have been almost ashamed to confess, and have industriously exerted themselves to palliate, constituted, in truth, the most auspicious circumstance of his life, and was the best proof of his increase in religious knowledge and holiness of mind.

Whoever considers with a Christian eye the death of Dr. Johnson will readily perceive that, according to the usual order of Providence, it could not have been free from agitation and anxiety. Johnson was a man of tender conscience, and one who from his very infancy had been instructed in Christian principles. But he was also, in the strict judgment of revealed religion, an inconsistent man. Neither his habits nor his companions had been such as his own conscience approved; and even a short time before his end we find one of his biographers lamenting that "the visits of idle and some worthless persons were never unwelcome to him,” on the express ground that "these things drove on time." His ideas of morality being of the highest order, many things which are considered by men at large as but venial offences appeared to him as positive crimes. Even his constitutional indolence and irritability of mind were sufficient of themselves to keep him constantly humbled and self-abased; and though among his gay or literary companions he usually appears upon the comparatively high ground of a Christian moralist, and the strenuous defender of revealed religion, yet compared with the Divine standard and test of truth, he felt himself both defective and disobedient.

Together with this conscientious feeling he had adopted certain incorrect, not to say superstitious, ideas, respecting the method of placating the Deity. He seems, for example, to have believed that penance, in its confined and popish sense, as distinguished from