“By many a death-bed I have been,
By many a sinner’s parting scene,
But never aught like this.”
As the moment drew near when his spirit, leaving the body, was to be transported to God’s bar, he trembled, and cried aloud for mercy. He gathered the most devout of the clergy around his bedside, and entreated them to pray for him.
Professing heart-felt repentance, the dying monarch implored that the rite of baptism and that of the Lord’s Supper might be administered to him. He received both of these ordinances, and still found but little peace. There are doubtless death-bed repentances; but they are very rare. It is only by living the life of the righteous that one can expect to know by blessed experience what it is “sweetly to fall asleep in Jesus.” Trembling, hoping, despairing, the imperial sinner passed away into the vast unknown.
How deep is the shade of melancholy which lingers around these sad recitals! Where now are those monarchs who once ruled the world? Where now are the soldiers of those thronging armies, which, fourteen centuries ago, swept the nations with billows of flame and blood?
And where shall we all be when a few more of these fleeting years shall have passed away? Is it wise to live for this world alone, when life is such a vapor, and when we are so soon to be ushered into the dread scenes of eternity? There is a voice, solemn as the grave, coming up to us from all these past ages, saying, “Prepare to meet thy God.”
“The sun is but a spark of fire,
A transient meteor in the sky:
The soul, immortal as its Sire,