some persons of this character seemed bent on destroying his reputation, and multiplied their slanders till they ceased to gain any credence. When these malicious designs upon his character proved abortive, their enmity manifested itself in other forms. He once alludes to this opposition in his letters, at a time when it had pleased God eminently to bless his labours. "Enemies rage most terribly. You have probably seen in the papers an account of the attempt to burn our meeting-house. It was little less than a miracle that the house was not burnt, with many others. Never, since I have been here, has the enmity of the heart been permitted to rage as it does now. Every one, except my own people, seems ready to curse me; and I am weary of living in continual strife." The good man, however, at length came out of every trial untarnished, and brighter for the ordeal. No charge could be sustained against him, but such as was urged against the prophet Daniel; and the ultimate issue was not essentially different; respect for him, and veneration for the God whom he worshipped.

The year 1816 was remarkably distinguished by the blessing of God upon his ministry; but his own feelings were still subject to those rapid alternations which we have already noticed. Thus we find him writing to his mother: "Oh, what a Master do I serve! I have known nothing, felt nothing, all my days, even in comparison with what I now see in him. Never was preaching such'sweet work as it is now; never did the world seem such a nothing; never did heaven appear so near, so sweet, so overwhelmingly glorious... God's promises appear so strong, so solid, so real, so substantial-more so than the rocks and the everlasting hills; and his perfections-what shall I say of them? When I think of one, I wish to dwell upon it for ever; but another, and another, equally glorious, claims a share of admiration. And when I begin to praise, I wish never to cease, but to find it the commencement of that song which will never end. Very often have I felt as if I could that moment throw off the body, without staying to 'first go, and bid them farewell that are at home in my house.' Let who will be rich, or admired, or prosperous, it is enough for me that there is such a God as Jehovah, such a Saviour as Jesus, and that they are infinitely and unchangeably glorious and happy!" And, yet, in the very same page with the above glowing effusion we find the following: "I see more and more how exceedingly little there is of spirituality in my best affections. Imagination, natural affections, and self-love, compose by much the largest part of my experiences. Indeed, I can scarcely discover any thing else. It is like a âre just kindled; much smoke, some blaze, but little heat. I have been praying, more than I ever did before, for more spiritual affection and clearer views; it as yet my gracious God does not answer my request. But he knows best,d him I can leave it."

His diary goes on with the same vicissitudes. One day he writes: "Had no freedora either in prayer or preaching, and the congregation appeared uncommonly stupid. Concluded that there was to be no revival under me. Was exceedingly distressed, but felt no disposition to murmur, or be impatient. Withdrew to my chamber, to weep and pray. It seemed clear that I was the great obstacle to a revival." Yet shortly afterwards we find him rejoicing in the revival which he had so earnestly implored, and laboured, in humble dependence upon the promises of God, to promote. He says to his mother, Sept. 1816: "The past summer has been the happiest which I have enjoyed since I was settled. Were it not for the dreadfully depressing effects of ill health, I should be almost too happy. It seems to me that no domestic troubles, not even the loss of wife and children, could disturb me much, might I enjoy such consolations as I have been favoured with most of the time since the date of my last letter. Soon after that, the revival, which I feared was at an end, began again, and things

now look as promising as ever. My meeting-house overflows, and some of the church are obliged to stay at home on account of the impossibility of obtaining seats. I have, in the main, been favoured with great liberty, both in the pulpit and out; and it has very often seemed as if, could I only drop the body, I could continue, without a moment's pause, to praise and adore to all eternity. This goodness is perfectly astonishing and incomprehensible. I am in a maze whenever I think of it. Every day, for years, I have been expecting some dreadful judgment, reckoning, as Hezekiah did, 'that as a lion God would break all my bones, and from day even to night make an end of me.' Now and then I have said to myself, It is coming: now God will cast me out of his vineyard: now he will lay me aside, or withdraw his Spirit, and let me fall into some great sin.' But, instead of the judgments which I expected, and deserve, he sends nothing but mercies; such great mercies, too, that I absolutely stagger under them, and all my words are swallowed up." And then follows a passage ardent beyond even his ordinary fervour: "But, great as my reasons are to love God for his favours, methinks he is infinitely more precious on account of his perfections. Never did he appear so inexpressibly glorious and lovely, as he has for some weeks past. He is indeed all in all. I have nothing to fear, nothing to hope, from creatures: they are all mere shadows and puppets. There is only one Being in the universe, and that Being is God; may I add, He is my God! I long to go and see him in heaven. I long still more to stay and serve him on earth. Rather I rejoice to be just where he pleases, and to be what he pleases. Never did selfishness and pride appear so horrid. Never did I see myself to be such a monster, so totally dead to all wisdom and goodness. But I can point up, and say, There is my righteousness, my wisdom, my all. In the hands of Christ I lie passive and helpless, and am astonished to see how he can work in me. He does all; holds me up, carries me forward, works in me and by me; while I do nothing, and yet never worked faster in my life. To say all in a word, 'My soul followeth hard after thee; thy right hand upholdeth me.'"

It may seem strange, but such are the anomalies of our fallen nature, that the man who penned the above passage should have been exposed, among his other mental conflicts, to the temptation of actual infidelity. Yet it was even so; and the record, painful as it is, may not be without its use. Twice was he harassed with infidel objections, which seemed to him, while labouring under them, stronger than any thing that had been urged by any anti-Christian writer. "It seems to me," he says, on the first occasion, "that my state has been far worse than that of Mansoul was, when Diabolus and his legions broke into the town. They could not get into the castle, the heart; but my castle was full of them. But do not be troubled for me, I am now better." On the second occasion, about a year and a half after the above, he writes: "It seems to me, that those who die young, like Brainerd and Martyn, know almost nothing of the difficulty of persevering in the Christian race. My difficulties increase every year. There is one trial which you cannot know experimentally: it is that of being obliged to preach to others when one doubts of every thing, and can scarcely believe that there is a God. All the atheistical, deistical, and heretical objections which I meet with in books, are childish babblings, compared with those which Satan suggests, and which he urges upon the mind with a force which seems irresistible. Yet I am often obliged to write sermons, and to preach, when these objections beat upon me like a whirlwind, and almost distract me. When he asks, as he does continually ask, What have you gained by all your prayers? I know not what to reply. However, pray I must, and, God assisting me, pray I will. The way is

indeed difficult, but I can devise no other which is not more so. no one to whom I can go, if I forsake Christ."

There is

In the year 1825 his health began seriously to decline. The succeeding winter was one of infirmity and suffering. He continued to preach on the Sunday; but the exhaustion consequent upon the exertion often rendered it difficult for him to reach his home, distant but a few rods, nor could he lead the devotions of his own family; and his Sabbath nights were nights of restlessness and anguish. Still, when the day returned he longed for the habitation of God's house, and again repeated his efforts, and with similar consequences. He was, however, at length compelled to yield to the irresistible power of disease. Parts of his body, including his right arm and left side, were very singularly affected. They were incapable of motion, and lost all sense of feeling externally; while in the interior parts of the limbs thus affected he experienced at intervals a most intense burning sensation, which he compared to a stream of fused metal, or liquid fire, coursing through his bones. No external applications were of the least service. And, in addition to his acute sufferings from this source, he was frequently subject to most violent attacks of head-ache. It was with great reluctance that he relinquished preaching. "The spirit continued willing," long after the "flesh failed." He did not cease preaching at once, but at first secured assistance for half the day only. In his public ministrations during this period, when his body was sinking towards the grave, the subjects upon which he expatiated were in unison with his condition, as a servant of God ripening fast for heaven. There was much of the nature of testimony for God. He omitted no opportunity, public or private, of maintaining the honour and perfections of Him whose ambassador he was. He could scarcely utter a word without rendering it obvious to all who heard him, that God was higher in his esteem than all created beings. Of the effect of his last public ministrations, particularly at the communion-table, some conception may be formed from an extract furnished by a gentleman who for twelve years had been an occasional attendant on his ministry. The first paragraph has no special reference to this period, but may properly be retained as an introduction to the second.

"At the sacramental table, especially, did his mind appear to be absorbed in the contemplation of things unseen and eternal. To a candid observer it was manifest, at such seasons, that his fellowship was with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.' I doubt not that I express the feelings of each member of his church, when I say, that often on those occasions he seemed to soar to the third heaven; and by those fervent and elevated effusions of thought, with which he always accompanied his administration of the ordinance, he literally carried the minds, if not the hearts, of his hearers with him. His influence in this respect is associated with my earliest recollections of Dr. Payson. In one particular instance, which occurred during my boyhood, such was the absorbing influence of his eloquence on my own mind-arising, doubtless, more from the attraction of his fervent zeal, and that creative fancy for which he was so remarkably distinguished, than from any special regard on my own part to the truths he uttered that from the commencement of the public services of the afternoon, to the close of the sacramental season which succeeded them, it seemed like a pleasing reverie, and had all the effect of an ocular survey of every scene connected with the humiliation and exaltation of the Saviour. He seemed to have taken his flight from one of the most elevated heights of meditation, and to soar in a climax of devotion and sublimity of thought, until faith changed the heavenly vision into a reality, and spread all the glories of redemption around the consecrated symbols of Christ's death.

I had the solemn pleasure, too, of being present at one of his last communion seasons with the church on earth. It was an affecting, a soulcheering scene. Its interest was greatly enhanced by the nearness in which he seemed to stand to the communion of the church triumphant. His body was so emaciated with long and acute suffering, that it was scarcely able to sustain the effort once more imposed upon it: but his soul, raised above its perishing influence, and filled with a joyful tranquillity, seemed entirely regardless of the weakness of its mortal tenement. His right hand and arm were so palsied by disease as to be quite useless; except that in the act of breaking the bread, when he could not well dispense with it, he placed it on the table with the other hand, just as you raise any lifeless weight, until it had performed the service required of it. It seemed as if he was unwilling that even the withered hand should be found unemployed in the holy work. Truly, thought I, there must be a blessed reality in that religion which can thus make the soul tranquil and happy in the constant and rapid advances of decay and death.

"I have never known Dr. Payson when he seemed more abstracted from earth than on this occasion. It was, as he supposed, and as his church feared, their final interview at that table. In all the glowing fervour of devotion, assisted by his ever-fertile imagination, he contemplated the Saviour as visibly present in the midst of them; and with his usual eloquence and closeness of appeal he seemed to make each communicant feel that what he had imagined was reality: there was a breathless silence, and the solemnity of the scene could hardly have been surpassed if, as he expressed it, the Lord Jesus Christ were seen sitting before them, or addressing to each individual member the momentous inquiry, 'Lovest thou me?' I can say for one, that the terrors of hypocrisy never appeared so fearful, and the realities of the judgment-seat never seemed nearer than at that solemn hour."

On one occasion, after a sermon from his assistant, he rose, and thus solemnly addressed his people :

"Ever since I became a minister it has been my earnest wish that I might die of some disease which would allow me to preach a farewell sermon to my people; but as it is not probable that I shall ever be able to do this, I will attempt to say a few words now: it may be the last time that I shall ever address you. This is not merely a presentiment: it is an opinion founded on facts, and maintained by physicians acquainted with my case, that I shall never behold another spring.

"And now, standing on the borders of the eternal world, I look back on my past ministry, and on the manner in which I have performed its duties and, oh! my hearers, if you have not performed your duties better than I have mine, woe! woe! be to you, unless you have an Advocate and Intercessor in heaven. We have lived together twenty years, and have spent more than a thousand Sabbaths together, and I have given you at least two thousand warnings. I am now going to render an account how they were given; and you, my hearers, will soon have to render an account how they were received. One more warning I will give you. Once more your shepherd, who will soon be yours no longer, entreats you to flee from the wrath to come. Oh! let me have the happiness of seeing my dear people attending to their eternal interests, that I may not have reason to say, 'I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought.'

At the communion-table, the same day, he said, "Christians seem to expect that their views of Christ, and their love to him, will increase, without their using the proper means. They should select some scene in his life, and meditate long upon it, and strive to bring the circumstances before their minds, and imagine how he thought and felt at the time. At first,

all will appear confused and indistinct; but then let them continue to look steadily, and the mists will disappear, and their hearts will begin to burn with love to their Saviour. At least one scene in Christ's life should be thus reviewed every day, if the Christian hopes to find his love to his Redeemer increase."

He entered his chapel for the last time in August 1827; and the same month completed twenty years since he entered it the first time as a preacher. He made a great effort to go out, as there were twenty-one persons to be admitted to the church. He was supported into the house by his senior deacons; and although he merely read the covenant, and remained during the administration of the sacrament, he was exceedingly overcome. Most of the persons present were much affected; and after the services many crowded around him, to take his hand for the last time. In September he was seized with spasms; and it was not thought by his physician that he could survive a second attack; but his hold on life remained, though the spasms continued to return every succeeding night. Under these distressing circumstances he dictated the following seraphic letter to his sister.

"Dear Sister,-Were I to adopt the figurative language of Bunyan, I might date this letter from the land of Beulah, of which I have been for some weeks a happy inhabitant. The celestial city is full in my view. Its glories beam upon me, its breezes fan me, its odours are wafted to me, its sounds strike upon my ears, and its spirit is breathed into my heart. Nothing separates me from it but the River of Death, which now appears but an insignificant rill, that may be crossed at a single step, whenever God shall give permission. The Sun of Righteousness has been gradually drawing nearer and nearer, appearing larger and brighter as he approached; and now he fills the whole hemisphere, pouring forth a flood of glory, in which I seem to float like an insect in the beams of the sun, exulting, yet almost trembling, while I gaze on this excessive brightness, and wondering, with unutterable wonder, why God should deign thus to shine upon a sinful worm. A single heart and a single tongue seem altogether inadequate to my wants: I want a whole heart for every separate emotion, and a whole tongue to express that emotion.

"But why do I speak thus of myself and my feelings; why not speak only of our God and Redeemer? It is because I know not what to say. When I would speak of them my words are all swallowed up. I can only tell you what effects their presence produces; and even of these I can tell you but very little. O my sister, my sister! could you but know what awaits the Christian; could you know only so much as I know, you could not refrain from rejoicing, and even leaping for joy. Labours, trials, troubles, would be nothing: you would rejoice in afflictions, and glory in tribulations; and, like Paul and Silas, sing God's praises in the darkest night, and in the deepest dungeon. You have known a little of my trials and conflicts, and know that they have been neither few nor small; and I hope this glorious termination of them will serve to strengthen your faith, and elevate your hope.

"And now, my dear, dear sister, farewell. Hold on your Christian course but a few days longer, and you will meet in heaven

"Your happy and affectionate brother, "Edward Payson." We have now, in conclusion, only to copy a few of the many striking and affecting remarks which were minuted down from his dying lips.

He was asked, "Do you feel reconciled?"-"Oh! that is too cold. I rejoice, I triumph! and this happiness will endure as long as God himself; for it consists in admiring and adoring him. I can find no words to ex

CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 378.

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