CHAPTER XI.

FROM 1704 TO 1705.

HOWE'S LAST ILLNESS.-STATE OF MIND.-DEATH.-EXTRACT FROM HIS WILL.-HIS PERSON.-ANALYSIS OF HIS CHARACTER.

Ar the close of 1704, it was obvious to his friends, that Howe was fast approaching the close of all his toils and sufferings. His constitution had long been crumbling under a complication of maladies; and no new and violent form of disease was necessary to complete the work of destruction. "The earthly house of his tabernacle" was already tottering.

His decline was so slow, that, feeble as he was, he did not entirely relinquish his public duties till a very short time before his death. The peculiar circumstances of the case rendered his last services in the highest degree solemn and imposing. His now intensely vivid perceptions of Divine truth, and of eternal glory, imparted such preternatural vigour to his mind, that on these occasions he completely triumphed over all the infirmities of humanity. Once, in particular, at the communion, he was rapt into

such an ecstacy of joy and peace, that both himself and his audience thought he would have died under the strength of his emotions. It seemed as though, in that entranced and longing gaze on the already opening glories of the heavenly world, the eager, fluttering spirit would have broken the slight and feeble tie which was all that bound it to earth and time.

In the spring of 1705, and only a very few weeks before his death, he sent to the press the last thing he ever published; and nothing surely, under his present circumstances, could have been more appropriate. It was entitled, "On Patience in Expectation of Future Blessedness;" a virtue, alas! which few find it difficult to practise. The generality of Christians bear the sentence of prolonged exclusion from heaven with most exemplary endurance! With Howe, however, the case was different; like the apostle, "he desired to depart, and to be with Christ." He was weary of a world of sorrow and of sin, and longed to be at home and at rest.

His death, gradual in its approach, and long foreseen, was such as might be expected from the character of his mind, and the calm and even tenour of his life. He was a total stranger to the ecstacies into which some have been transported in that hour, and equally so to those alternations of light and darkness, of hope and

dread, which now raise the soul to the very gate of heaven, and now fill it with despair. Least of all was he likely to be haunted by those spectral forms of departed guilt, which sometimes steal back even on the forgiven and accepted spirit, under cover of that cloud of night in which anguish and the terrors of approaching death so often involve mortality. He was full of joy and hope; but it was joy and hope tranquil, serene, and unfaltering. This, of all the states of mind in which the Christian can meet the dying hour, is surely the most enviable; the most satisfactory to himself, and the most impressive to spectators. Such deep, solemn tranquillity of soul at such a moment, is the surest evidence of the reality of religious character, and best illustrates the power of religious truth. It can in no degree be attributed to a fictitious source; to the illusions of a perturbed imagination, or to that morbid excitement, that preternatural radiance, which disease will sometimes impart to the intellect, and which resembles the delirious splendour which it can sometimes kindle in the eye.

Howe continued to receive the visits of his friends after he was confined to his chamber; and, as they frequently declared, he addressed them more like one who was already an inhabitant of the heavenly world, than as "a man of like passions with themselves;" rather as a mes

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senger from the skies, than as one who was just departing on his journey thither: so steadfast, so assured was his hope; so full of tranquil certainty. To him, indeed, the scenes he was about to visit could hardly be said to be in a strange land." They had already become familiarized by the vivid exercise of that faith which penetrates the invisible and eternal world. Those visions of faith seemed now brighter than ever. Like the Jewish legislator, he died on Mount Nebo, with the glittering scenes of the "better country" spread out beneath his feet.

Amongst others who came to see him a short time before his death, was Richard Cromwell, now, like himself, far advanced in years. He came to pay his old friend and servant a visit of respect and of affectionate farewell. The interview, if we may judge either from the character of the parties, or the brief account which Calamy has given us of it, must have been peculiarly affecting. He tells us, "There was a great deal of serious discourse between them; tears were freely shed on both sides; and the parting was very solemn, as I have been informed by one that was present on the occasion."

That he was among the few who needed "patience in the expectation of future blessedness," is strikingly exemplified in the following incident. He once told his wife, that "though

he thought he loved her as well as it was fit for one creature to love another; yet if it were put to his choice, whether to die that moment, or to live that night, and the living that night would secure the continuance of his life for seven years to come, he would choose to die that moment."

One morning, finding himself much better than could have been expected after the severe sufferings of the preceding evening, he became remarkably cheerful. One of his attendants noticed it; upon which he made the characteristic reply, that "he was for feeling that he was alive, though most willing to die and lay the clog of mortality aside."

In those "considerations, and communings" with himself, which he committed to paper just before he left Antrim, and which have been already laid before the reader, he tells us that he dreaded" sharp pains more than death." This was exemplified in his last illness. His son, Dr. George Howe, a physician, having, without apprising him of his intention, lanced his father's leg, (part of which was already gangrened,) Howe asked "what he was doing;" saying at the same time, "I am not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of pain.”

It appears from a passage in Matthew Henry's MS. diary, that such an amendment took place shortly before his dissolution, that, though his