expected. I cannot say that I distrust my Saviour, for I know in whom I have believed; but I have not that pleasing readiness to depart which I had looked for." This distressed his relatives beyond expression. His friends were greatly pained, for they had looked for triumph. His departure was very slow, and still his language was, "I have no exhilaration or delightful readiness in my travel." The weeping circle pressed around him. Another hour passed. His hands and his feet became entirely cold. The feeling of heart remained the same. Another hour passes, and his vision has grown dim, but the state of his soul is unchanged. His daughter seemed as though her body could not sustain her anguish of spirit, if her father should cross the valley before the cloud passed from his sun. Before his hearing vanished, she made an agreement with him that at any stage as he travelled on, if he had a discovery of advancing glory, or a foretaste of heavenly delight, he should give her a certain token with his hand; his hands he could still move, cold as they were. She sat holding his hand hour after hour. In addition to his sight, his hearing at length failed. After a time he appeared almost unconscious of any thing, and the obstructed breathing peculiar to death was advanced near its termination, when he gave the token to his pale, but now joyous daughter; and the expressive flash of exultation was seen to spread itself through the stiffening muscles of his face. When his child asked him to give a signal if he had any happy view of heavenly light, with the feelings and opinions I once owned I could have asked, "Do you suppose that the increase of the

death-chill will add to his happiness? Are you to expect, that as his eyesight leaves, and as his hearing becomes confused, and his breathing convulsed, and as he sinks into that cold, fainting, sickening condition of pallid death, his exultation is to commence ?"

Then is the time when

It did then commence. many who enter the dark valley cheerless, begin to see something that transports; but some are too low to tell of it, and their friends think they departed under a cloud, when they really did not. It is at this stage of the journey that the enemy of God, who started with look of defiance and words of pride, seems to meet with that which alters his views and expectations; but he cannot tell it, for his tongue can no longer move.

Those who inquire after and read the death of the wife of the celebrated John Newton, will find a very plain and very interesting instance where the Saviour seemed to meet with a smiling countenance his dying servant, when she had advanced too far to call back to her sorrowful friends, and tell them of the pleasing news.

CHAPTER LX.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

My attention was awakened very much by observing the dying fancies of the servants of this world, differing with such characteristic singularity from the fancies of the departing Christian. It is no uncommon thing for those who die to believe they see, or hear, or feel that which appears only fancy to by-standers. Their friends believe that it is the overturning of their intellect. I am not about to enter into the discussion of the question, whether it is or is not always fancy. Some attribute it to more than fancy; but inasmuch as in many instances the mind is deranged while its habitation is falling into ruins, and inasmuch as it is the common belief that it is only imagination of which I am writing, we will look at it under the name of fancy.

The fanciful views of the dying servants of sin, and the devoted friends of Christ, were strangely different as far as my observation extended. One who had been an entire sensualist and a mocker at religion, while dying, appeared in his senses in all but one thing. "Take that black man from the room,' said he. He was answered that there was none in the room. He replied, "There he is, standing near the window. His presence is very irksome to me, take him out." After a time, again and again his

call was, "Will no one remove him? There he is; surely some one will take him away."

I was mentioning to another physician my surprise that he should have been so much distressed even if there had been many blacks in the room, for he had been waited on by them day and night for many years; and also my wonder that the mind had not been diseased in some other respect, when he told me the names of two others, his patients, men of similar lives, who were tormented with the same fancy, and in the same way, while dying.

A young female who called the Man of Calvary her greatest friend, was, when dying, in her senses in all but one particular. "Mother," she would say, pointing in a certain direction, "do you see those beautiful creatures?" Her mother would answer, "No, there is no one there, my dear." She would reply, "Well, that is strange. I never saw such countenances and such attire. My eye never rested on any thing so lovely." Oh, says one, this is all imagination, and the notions of a mind collapsing; wherefore tell of it? My answer is, that I am not about to dispute, or to deny that it is fancy; but the fancies differ in features and in texture. Some in their derangement call out, "Catch me, I am sinking; hold me, I am falling;" others say, "Do you hear that music? Oh, were ever notes so celestial!" This kind of notes, and these classes of fancies belonged to different classes of individuals, and who they were, was the item which attracted my wonder Such things are noticed by few, and remembered by almost none; but I am inclined to believe, that if

notes were kept of such cases, volumes of interest might be formed.

My last remark here, reader, is, that we necessarily speak somewhat in the dark of such matters, but you and I will know more shortly. Both of us will see and feel for ourselves where we cannot be mistaken, in the course of a very few months, or years.