Napoleon at St. Helena. Page 83.
That he sometimes thought of the subject of religion, indeed, is evident, if we believe a conversation which Count Monthoton, one of his attendants, has recorded. “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself,” Napoleon is represented to have said, “founded empires upon force! Jesus Christ alone founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him. I die before my time, and my body will be given back to the earth to become food for worms. Such is the fate which so soon awaits him who has been called the Great Napoleon! what a difference between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, and adored, and which is extending over the whole earth. Call you this dying? Is it not living rather? The death of Christ is the death of a God!” Napoleon became every day more and more unhappy. He used to feed some fish in a pond, but they sickened and died. “Everything that I love,” said he, “leaves me: everything that belongs to me is stricken!”
At last the event came which released him from all his earthly sorrows. A painful disease, called cancer in the stomach, attacked him; and, after considerable suffering, he expired on the 5th of May, 1821. The night of his dissolution was a terrible one; a fearful storm was raging all around. Napoleon had, for some hours, been insensible; towards six o’clock in the evening, however, he pronounced the words, “Head of the Army,” as if his thoughts were running on the field of battle, and immediately afterwards his immortal spirit quitted the tabernacle of clay in which it dwelt. Such was Napoleon’s death-bed. Alas! we look in vain upon it for that language of triumph which has so often broken from the lips of the followers of Jesus, when passing through the dark “valley of the shadow of death.” With Napoleon’s dying moments, contrast those of an eminent saint of God, Dr. Payson. “I seem to swim in a flood of glory,” said he to some young persons, “which God pours down upon me. And I know—I know that my happiness is but begun—I cannot doubt that it will last for ever. My young friends, were I master of the whole world, what could it do for me like this! Nothing, nothing. Now all this happiness I trace back to the religion which I have preached, and to the time when that great change took place in my heart, which, I have often told you, is necessary to salvation;—and I now tell you again, that without this change you cannot, no, you cannot see the kingdom of God!”
Napoleon was buried at Longwood, in the Island of St. Helena, under a large willow tree; but in 1840 his remains, with the consent of the British Government, were removed to Paris, and buried with grand honors in that city.
THE PITCAIRN ISLANDERS.
Many islands have at different times risen above the sea, which had for long years washed over and hidden them. There are two ways in which new islands are thus born like a fresh creation from God.
The great volcanic force which sends out flames and ashes from the tops of high mountains, or makes the solid earth tremble and crack, is at work also below the bed of the sea, and from time to time islands are raised there either slowly or by some sudden convulsion, just as we have also reason to believe that other islands are even now sinking lower under the influence of the same force, until, most likely, in years to come, the waves will once more flow over them again. You must not forget that when we talk of the forces of nature we mean really the hand of God. He it is who sends these great convulsions, or who directs the slow upheaving of new land. All is quite as truly the work of God as when, at His word, the dry land first appeared. “Fire and hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind,” are all “fulfilling His word.”