in a manner that showed the utmost tenderness, accompanied with the firmest constancy of mind. And whilst he was so little sensible of the terrors of death as to embrace its approach with joy, he could not but express a concern for the grief he saw it caused in others 3.

A short time before his death this good man wrote the following REFLECTION.-"True religion is a perfection of human nature, and the joy and delight of every one that feels it active and strong within him. Of this I write with the more concern and emotion because I have felt this the true, and indeed the only joy which runs through a man's heart and life. It is that which has been for many years my greatest support: I rejoice daily in it. I feel from it the earnest of that supreme joy which I pant and long for, and I am sure there is nothing else, which can afford any true or lasting happiness."

3 T. Burnet's Memoir of the Life of Bishop Burnet, appended to Burnet's History of his Life and Times.

ADDISON was an eminent poet, and the muchadmired author of many moral and religious essays. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who wrote the life of this celebrated man, informs us, that he had for some time been oppressed by shortness of breath, which was now aggravated by a dropsy; and that, finding his danger pressing, he prepared to die, conformably to his own precepts and professions.

Before this attack of illness, Addison had made the following observation in one of the numbers of the Spectator: "There is nothing in history which is so improving to the reader, as those accounts which we meet with of the deaths of eminent persons, and of their behaviour in that dreadful season. I may also add, that there are no parts in history which affect and please the reader in so sensible a manner. The reason I take to be this; because there is no other single circumstance in the story of any person which can possibly be the case of every one who reads

it. When we see a person at the point of death, we cannot forbear being attentive to every thing he says or does, because we are sure that some time or other we shall ourselves be in the same circumstances."

Dr. Johnson says; "Lord Warwick (Addison's step-son) was a young man of very irregular life, and perhaps of loose opinions. Addison, for whom he did not want respect, had very diligently endeavoured to reclaim him; but his arguments and expostulations had no effect. One experiment, however, remained to be tried. When he found his life near its end, he directed the young lord to be called; and when he desired with great tenderness to hear his last injunctions, told him, 'I have sent for you, that you may see how a Christian can die1.? What effect this awful scene had on the Earl, I know not: he likewise died himself in a short time."

REFLECTIONS BY ADDISON:-1. I would have every one to consider that he is in this life nothing more than a passenger, and that he is not to set up his rest here, but to keep an attentive eye upon that state of being to which he approaches every moment, and which will be for ever fixed and permanent. 2. A trust in the assistance of an Almighty Being produces patience, hope, cheerfulness, and all other dispositions of the mind that alleviate those calamities which we are not able to remove. 3. When the soul is hovering in the last moments of its separation, when it is just entering on another state of existence, to converse with scenes, and objects, and companions that are altogether new,-what can support her under such

4 Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets, vol. ii.

tremblings of thought, such fear, such anxiety, such apprehensions, but the casting of all her cares upon Him who first gave her being, who has conducted her through one stage of it, and will be always with her to guide and comfort her in her progress through eternity. 4. Religious hope has this advantage above any other kind of hope, that it is able to revive the dying man, and to fill his mind not only with secret comfort and refreshment, but sometimes with rapture and transport. He triumphs in his agonies, whilst the soul springs forward with delight to the great object which she has always had in view, and leaves the body with an expectation of being reunited to her in a glorious and joyful resurrection.

REV. CHARLES LESLIE, A.M.
DIED 1722.

THIS able Divine was the author of "The Truth of Christianity demonstrated," "A Short and Easy Method with the Jews," and other convincingly

argumentative works. The following extract contains the beginning and ending of the last letter which he ever wrote.

"To my worthy friend, R. Kenyon.

"Sir, I make this effort, probably the last, of using my pen. Though the events of life have given me occasions to take a nearer view of the doctrines and worship of other Christian Churches, yet from thence I have been confirmed in my belief, that the Church of England, abuses notwithstanding, is the most agreeable to the institutions. of Christ and his Apostles. And being now in a point of time to which eternity is near, you will believe me if I declare (and to the world I would declare it) that in this communion I resolve to die, and expect to be saved by the merits and mediation of Christ Jesus.

Instead of a Reflection, we will add a suitable PRAYER from the Liturgy of the Church. "O God, the protector of all that trust in Thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; increase and multiply upon us thy mercy, that thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal: Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ's sake our Lord. Amen."

5 From a Letter to Mr. Kenyon, in the "Life of Charles Leslie," prefixed to his Works.

6 Collect for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity.