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The story of ALTAMONT, a young nobleman, and a near relative of Dr. YOUNG, is well known; and yet it is so affecting, that I cannot refrain from transcribing part of it. To a friend, whose morals he had injured, he said, " Remorse for the past throws my thoughts on the future. Worse dread of the future, strikes them back on the past. I turn, and turn, and find no ray. Didst thou feel half the mountain that is on me, thou wouldst struggle with the martyr for his stake, and bless heaven for the flames: those are not everlasting flames; that is not an unquenchable fire. My principles have poisoned my friend; my extravagance has beggared my boy; my unkindness has murdered my wife! and is there another hell? Oh, thou, blasphemed, yet most indulgent Lord God, hell itself is a refuge, if it hides me from thy frown."

The death of VOLTAIRE, the prince of French infidels, was one of awful interest. Notwithstanding the efforts of his friends to calm his mind, and support his resolution in his last moments, he expired in unutterable anguish. .It was at the theatre, where he had just received the unbounded applause of a crowded audience, that he was first struck with the disease which

closed his impious career. "The next day," writes MARMONTEL, one of his companions, "I saw him in his bed. Well, said I, are you at last

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satiated with glory? Ah! my good friend, he replied, you talk to me of glory, and I am dying in frightful torture." To his physician he exclaimed, "I am abandoned both by God and by man. I will give you half my fortune, if you will save my life for six months!" "Sir," said Dr. TRONCHIN, "you cannot live six weeks." "Then," he replied, in a paroxysm of rage, “I shall go to hell, and you will go with me!" While his companions in infidelity fled from his bed-side unable to sustain the sight, or bear the horrible execrations which he pronounced on them, his physician declared, that the furies of Orestes could give but a faint idea of those of Voltaire.

I shall add one instance more, and it shall be from the more humble walks of life. It is related by a minister, who, at that time, officiated in a populous manufacturing town in the West of England, and was a spectator of the scene. "I once saw a man in despair. His appearance was terrific. His extended mouth, his dark and rolling eyes, gave a peculiarity to the object, which the feelings of humanity could scarcely endure. I stood motionless. He saw me, and thus addressed me. 'Come hither, young man, and see what it is to forsake the Saviour of the world. Fourteen years ago I was a professor of religion. I walked in the fear of the Lord, and

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often enjoyed that peace which passeth all understanding. But on my removing from Romsey, and settling at Portsmouth, I forsook my closet, my Bible, and my place of worship; and nowGod has forsaken me. I feel more anguish than I can express. *** Poor Mark, thou wast once a happy man; but now thou art miserable: once animated with a hope of future happiness; but now tormented by despair. If I were in hell I could not suffer more.' Addressing his wife, who stood weeping by his side, he said, Water, water: give me water: for in five minutes it will be denied me! When he had taken a little, he looked me in the face and said, 'Oh, that I could take some with me to hell! but that is impossible.' He then lifted up his eyes, and thus addressed his Sovereign Judge, ‘Righteous art thou, O Lord, when thou judgest; and just art thou, when thou condemnest. I have deserved all that I suffer; I have abused thy mercy; I have defied thy power. When sinking beneath thy vengeance I will exclaim, Thou art just and holy.' I retired from this awful scene with a class of feelings which I cannot easily describe."

These impressive examples are instead of a thousand arguments to convince us of the truth that “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." However wicked men, while

living, may assume an air of ease and gaiety, and even smile at what they conceive to be the effects of a heated imagination, or the phantoms of a gloomy superstition, they have found, at death, their confidence fail, and that the things which they had treated as the creation of fancy, are indeed awful realities. The alarm of such persons is usually great in proportion to the surprise with which they have been seized, and the sense they entertain of the number and aggravation of their sins. The phrenzy of their despair reminds us of the irruption of a burning mountain, the embers of whose fires have been so stifled in its hideous caverns, that even the smoke which once ascended to its summit is not visible; yet now they gather fresh strength, and rolling their tremendous thunders, break break out with increased violence. Oh, it is a fearful thing to die, without hope of an interest in the Saviour! When Saul understood that to-morrow he and his ́sons should be numbered with the dead, "he fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore 'afraid, because of the words of Samuel; and there was no strength in him:" and when Belshazzar, in the midst of his banquet of wine, saw a hand writing in mystic characters on the wall, his countenance changed, the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. Nor are these the feelings of men of infidel prin'ciples, and profligate lives, merely: most who are

conscious of their guilt, and have no sense of pardon through the sacrifice of Christ, will dread the hour which closes the term of their probation, and introduces them into a state which will be final and everlasting. "Oh, Sir," said one to his pastor, who came to visit him, "my life is done, and my work is not begun!" "The battle is over," said a minister of religion, in high station, "and the victory is lost." Who can imagine the condition of that man, who knows that his body, emaciated by disease, cannot live, and is equally certain that his guilty and terrified soul dare not die!

"Oh, the hour when this material
Shall have vanished like a cloud;
When amid the wide ethereal
All the invisible shall crowd;
And the naked soul, surrounded
With innumerous hosts of light,
Triumph in the view unbounded,
And adore the Infinite.

In that sudden strange transition,
By what new and finer sense
Shall she grasp the mighty vision,
And receive its influence?
Angels, guard the new immortal
Through the wonder-teeming space,

To the everlasting portal,

To the spirit's resting place.

Will she there no fond emotion,
Nought of earthly love retain ;

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