who has
borne the life-long load of infirmity during his earthly pilgrimage. At
this point, under most circumstances, I would close the doors and draw
the veil of privacy before the chamber where the birth which we call
death, out of life into the unknown world, is working its mystery. But
this friend of ours stood alone in the world, and, as the last act of
his life was mainly in harmony with the rest of its drama, I do not here
feel the force of the objection commonly lying against that death-bed
literature which forms the staple of a certain portion of the press. Let
me explain what I mean, so that my readers may think for themselves a
little, before they accuse me of hasty expressions.

The Roman Catholic Church has certain formulas for its dying children,
to which almost all of them attach the greatest importance. There is
hardly a criminal so abandoned that he is not anxious to receive the
"consolations of religion" in his last hours. Even if he be senseless,
but still living, I think that the form is gone through with, just as
baptism is administered to the unconscious new-born child. Now we do not
quarrel with these forms. We look with reverence and affection upon all
symbols which give peace and comfort to our fellow-creatures. But the
value of the new-born child's passive consent to the ceremony is null,
as testimony to the truth of a doctrine. The automatic closing of a
dying man's lips on the consecrated wafer proves nothing in favor of the
Real Presence, or any other dogma. And, speaking generally, the evidence
of dying men in favor of any belief is to be received with great
caution.

They commonly tell the truth about their present feelings, no doubt. A
dying man's deposition about anything he knows is good evidence. But
it is of much less consequence what a man thinks and says when he is
changed by pain, weakness, apprehension, than what he thinks when he is
truly and wholly himself. Most murderers die in a very pious frame of
mind, expecting to go to glory at once; yet no man believes he shall
meet a larger average of pirates and cut-throats in the streets of the
New Jerusalem than of honest folks that died in their beds.

Unfortunately, there has been a very great tendency to make capital of
various kinds out of dying men's speeches. The lies that have been put
into their mouths for this purpose are endless. The prime minister,
whose last breath was spent in scolding his nurse, dies with a
magnifice