eyes darted hate and distraction. He grinned at me, and told me how he despised and hated my prayers; at the same time he exclaimed, Curse on you all.' "On the 26th, I visited him for the last time. I saw his dissolution was at hand. My soul pitied him. My painful feelings on his account cannot be expressed. I spoke to him with tenderness and plainness about the state of his soul, and of another world; but he answered me with a high degree of displeasure; his countenance at the same time was horrible beyond expression; and with great vehemence he commanded me to cease speaking to him. I then told him, it would be the last time that ever I should see him in this world; and asked if he were willing for me to put up another prayer for him? He then with great strength, considering his weakness, cried out, 'No.' This was the last word which I heard him speak. I left him, and he died in the evening." 2. THE MOTHER OF DAVID HUME. "Insidious Death! should his strong hand arrest, Eternity's inexorable chain Fast binds, and vengeance claims the full arrear."-YOUNG. HUME, the historian, received a religious education from his mother, and early in life was the subject of strong and hopeful religious impressions; but as he approached manhood they were effaced, and confirmed infidelity succeeded. Maternal partiality, however alarmed at first, came at length to look with less and less pain on this delusion, and filial love and reverence seemed to have been absorbed in the pride of philosophical scepticism; for Hume applied himself with unwearied, and, unhappily, with successful, efforts to sap the foundation of his mother's faith. Having succeeded in this dreadful work, he went abroad, and as he was returning, an express met him in London with a letter from his mother, informing him that she was in a deep decline and could not long survive she said she found herself without any support in her distress; that he had taken away that only source of comfort upon which, in all cases of affliction, she used to rely, and that now she found her mind sinking into despair; she did not doubt that her son would afford her some substitute for her religion; and she conjured him to hasten to her, or at least to send her a letter containing such consolations as philosophy could afford to a dying mortal. Hume was overwhelmed with anguish on receiving this letter, and hastened to Scotland, travelling day and night; but before he arrived his mother expired. No permanent impression seems, however, to have been made on his mind by this trying event; and whatever remorse he might have felt at the moment, he soon relapsed into his previous hardness of heart. that false philosophy restores the sting to gives again the victory to the grave. Thus it is death, and 3. DEATH OF AN AGED BACKSLIDER. "Time destroy'd Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt."-YorNG. ON a bleak winter's night, in the year 1844, after having retired to rest, I was suddenly aroused by the repeated mention of my name. On hastening to discover the cause, I found that two Christian persons had come, earnestly to request me to visit an aged but dying apostate. The distance from the house of the sufferer, and a slight indisposition of body, at first induced me to refuse. "O come, do come! she is dying, and says that she is eternally lost!" Overpowered by their solicitations, and the sense of duty, and indulging the thought that perhaps God designed me to be the messenger of peace to the poor creature, I felt compelled to accompany them. The night was cheerless, dark, and dreary; the sky was starless; and everything around us seemed but as the image of the sad scene to which we were hastening. The wind whistled wildly, and appeared as if it conveyed with its "doubled-tongued voice" the groans of the dying sinner. This, added to the death-like stillness of all besides, predisposed my mind for the chamber of sickness. As we approached the house, her cries of despair were distinctly heard; and with these ringing in my ears, I was ushered into her room. From the snows of time, which were scattered thickly over her head, and the numerous wrinkles on her brow, it was evident that she had long since passed the boundary of "threescore years and ten." As soon as she saw me, with a wild, fitful light shooting into her sunken eyes, which were rolling fiercely in their deep sockets, and in a tone expressive of the awful agony of her soul, she exclaimed, in the language of the Gadarene demoniac, "Art thou come hither to torment me before the time?" "No," I replied, "but rather to assist you in obtaining the mercy you need." "Mercy? There is none for me! I tell you I am forsaken by God! I loved him once; but now-" and an involuntary shudder shook her frame. "The same blessing you then enjoyed is held out to you now, upon the exercise of a similar faith," I replied. "I cannot, I dare not, I will not, believe again; I have been deceived!" The peculiar emphasis laid on the latter part of this sentence, induced me to make inquiries as to her previous history. It appears that in early life she became seriously awakened, under the ministry of a devoted servant of Christ, and soon after obtained peace with God, and joined herself to the Independent Church in the town in which she then lived. For many years she adorned the Christian profession by her most exemplary character. Her evidence of acceptance with God was undoubted, and fear seldom disturbed her peace; she emphatically walked "High in salvation, and the climes of bliss!" At length, from the peculiar tenets to which she weekly listened, she imbibed, in a carnally presumptuous way, the doctrine of final perseverance. The influence this had upon her mind was soon perceptible: others have held this doctrine in connexion with much prayerful jealousy over themselves, and thus have neutralized the possible effects of a statement which we think unsupported by Scripture-but she became indifferent as to her present experience; the power of religion was lost; reality declined into dead formality; and yet, when spoken to on the subject, she regarded herself as perfectly safe, and unable finally to fall! She eventually became careless in her attendance on the means of grace and the discharge of religious duties, and left the society. Being now free from the salutary restraint which union with a Christian Church imposes, she sinned with greediness. When warned of her danger, and referred to her preceding life, she seemed devoid of all religious feeling; and, in extenuation of her sin, would boastingly urge that she could not be lost, for she was once a child of God! Her increasing years only increased her guilt, and hardened her once tender heart. She continually abused the goodness of God, and presumptuously sinned, that grace might abound, till old age, with its attendant infirmities and afflictions, laid her upon the sick-bed. Now, when death's chilling grasp was felt, and the dreadful realities of an eternal world were disclosing themselves, she saw and felt the rottenness of that foundation on which she had built her hopes of salvation. Trembling under a fearful apprehension of that which awaited her, and with a full consciousness of her past folly, she uttered the words above, "I have been deceived!" The beams of the morning sun now began to scatter themselves upon the earth, and daybreak gradually to dawn; but no ray of light to shine upon the poor suf-. ferer's soul: night, the night of life,-the night of death, -the fearful presage of the "blackness of darkness forever," thickly enveloped her spirit! I returned to her room, resolving to make another, perhaps the last, effort to snatch this brand from the burning, over whose lake she was suspended by the attenuated and breaking thread of life. She appeared to be grappling with her conquering foe; her bosom heaved heavily, and her fearful sighs echoed through the room. I opened upon the fifty-first Psalm, and endeavoured to read the portions most appropriate to her melancholy case. Unexpectedly she stretched forth her trembling and almost nerveless arm, seized the book, and tore the leaf from the sacred volume! I knelt down to pray; as soon as I commenced, she mocked me in the most terrific manner, repeatedly exclaiming, "Don't pray for me! Don't pray for me! it increases my misery! I am lost! I am lost!" From urgent necessity, and being completely wearied, I soon after left her. During the day, I was informed that she remained much in the same state, frequently blaspheming the God of heaven, and invoking his wrath. The next morning I called, and found the taper of life nearly extinguished. Her tongue had ceased to lend its aid to increase her guilt; but alas! although unable to speak, her horrid glances, her awful groans, her significant signs, and her continual restlessness, betokened the |