t, or breath of suspicion, upon our motives in
attending to the subject of religion. Preparation for death consists in
justification by faith, extending its influence into the whole
character, to bring us under the rule of Christ. The fruit of this is
friendship with God, the confidence of love, knowing whom we have
believed, with the persuasion of our having committed to him an infinite
trust, and that he will keep it with covenant faithfulness. So when
death comes and knocks at the door, it is true the heart beats quicker,
as it is apt to do whoever knocks there; for, to give up one's hold on
life, to turn and look eternal things full in the face, to think of
meeting God, and of having your endless condition fixed, summons the
whole of natural and acquired fortitude; and only they who have an
unseen arm to lean upon at such a time, endure in that trial. Then past
experience comes in with her powerful aid: "I have fought a good fight;"
"the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps;" "remember, O
Lord, how I have walked before thee." Thus there is something to make
you feel that your justification, by free grace, has the evidence
afforded by its fruits; and the preparation to die may be likened to
that of which the Saviour speaks when he says, "He that is washed
needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit." I have seen
it, have watched it, have studied it, in the dying scenes of this child.
Hers was not the experience of the sinner, pulled suddenly from the
waves by a hand which he had for a long time, nay, always, spurned; but
her dying was an arrival at the end of a voyage, the coming home of a
good child to long-expecting hearts and arms. We said one to another
around her dying bed,--yes, we had composure to say, as we watched that
parting scene, that fading cloud, that sinking gale, that dying wave,
that shutting eye of day,--"Think of such a poor, helpless, dying
creature, if, in the sense intended by those words, she should 'fall
into the hands of the living God.'" And we glorified God in her. Never
did I see and feel more deeply, by contrast, the folly of trusting to a
death-bed repentance, to repair the errors of a wasted life. It is a
deliberate attempt at fraud upon the Most High; it is folly; for the
risk is fearful, and could we obtain salvation, how mercenarily!--and
what a memorial would it be in heaven of loss, instead of being "a crown
of righteousness!" They who are all their lifetim