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years;') but I will not say so. God is giving me this to make up the residue of my years. The Lord is even washing away my body, to let see that my spirit can live without it.”* My body is wasting" (he remarked soon after) “like a piece of brae by a mighty current; and yet the power of God keeps me up." "How have I formerly fretted and repined at the hundredth part of the trouble I have on my body now! Here you see a man dying a monument of the glorious power of admirable astonishing grace!"-" Study the power of religion. It is the power and not a name that will give the comfort I find.”‡—He repeated to some ministers a former remark,"What a demonstration has God given you and me of the immortality of the soul, by the vigour my intellectuals, and the lively actings of my spirit after God and the things of God, now when my body is low and also pained!"§ Very little before his departure, he said,—" Though my body be sufficiently teased, yet my spirit is untouched."||

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This is but a small selection of the many striking declarations uttered and repeated in various forms by him through the last week of life; and in his dying moments, when an attendant said,* Memoirs, p. 229, 230. + Ibid. 233. ‡ Ibid. p. 232. § Ibid. p. 234. Ibid. p. 236.

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"I hope you are encouraging yourself in the Lord," he "lifted up his hands, and clapped them," as a token of his joy, when the power of speech was gone.*

Had there been a temporary restoration of the frame inhabited by a spirit such as this, could it be rightly named convalescence? Or should we better describe it by the phrase which this dying believer twice used, when partial symptoms of recovery were felt,-a being "shipwrecked into health again?"† Is it not in truth, and sensibly, the convalescence of the spirit, to be thus casting off with triumph the death-struck form that encumbers it, "renovated day by day," while the "outward man" is "perishing," and the earthly "tabernacle dissolving" into dust? What is it but the earnest and the beginning of that immortal vigour, which no " fierce diseases" will assault, and no hidden decay can undermine? If-with submission to the Great Disposer-a Christian cannot but devoutly long for so blessed a departure, offering to beloved mourners some bright disclosures of "endless life," (like morning twilight before a vernal sunrise,) while they gaze upon the image of ruin,-then is it too much for

* Memoirs, p. 236.

† Ibid. p. 214, and p. 235.

him to be more "fervent in prayers," "in labours more abundant," through the short term of bodily health, or its uncertain renewal, "if by any means he may attain unto" that farewell blessedness; if the soul may be made perceptibly convalescent, while the body sinks in its last anguish, and give promise even in dissolution of a glorious and unfading health, "when Christ who is our life shall appear?"

XXVI.

ON ANNIVERSARIES, AS PECULIARLY PROMPTING US TO SERIOUS DEVOTION.

In the earliest stages of life we can have but few private anniversaries. The year is comparatively unmarked by memory, and all its days are given to hope. Even the birth-day, which is early distinguished by parental notice, and the new year's day, which general feeling or habit observes, are rather viewed in connexion with the future than the past. But the memorable days which succeeding years will recal, must multiply for each of us as years revolve. There arises gradually a calendar of our individual history: and its anniversaries are far more affecting to ourselves, than most of those which the almanack presents.

The period of our attaining some desired suc

cess; of our entrance on some important employ; of our embarking for some distant enterprise, or returning from it in safety; of our solemnly assuming new duties; of an endearing connexion commenced; of other fond relations ensuing; of some signal preservations, and of some poignant griefs, among which must be the successive dissolution of the tenderest ties of life;-all these, in some minds, already augment the record; and some of the last must, in almost every mind, continue to augment it, till our mortal records shall be closed. Perhaps there are those so awake both to grateful and to pensive recollections, that this unwritten register, amidst all the scenes of passing months, rarely fails to be reviewed; so that few such anniversaries escape, without a degree of lively remembrance and appropriate feeling. To some others, a calendar thus inscribed, still noting the additional days which are signalised as life goes on, might be more profitable than many a treatise. It would be the briefest and most impressive sort of diary; and not omitting the seasons which nature or Christianity celebrates, it would add a still increasing number, which must awaken, as powerfully, the serious thoughts and emotions of the individual. These emotions would indeed be dissimilar in kind and

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