I desire to join my insignificant testimony to that of the glorious cloud of witnesses, that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, to every one that believeth; that the way of holiness is the way of pleasantness and peace; and the ordinances of the gospel, are the effectual means of communion and fellowship with the Father and the Son.
Indeed all in God’s way, and in his word, is glorious, honourable, and like himself: he needs none of our testimonies; but it is the least we can do to celebrate his praises. I therefore being in some sense obliged, take this solemn occasion, before all the world, to acknowledge these, among many other obligations, I have received from him. And to bequeath, as my last legacy to my family, this advice, to chuse the Lord for their God: for he hath been my father’s God, the God both of my wife’s predecessors and mine. We hope he hath been our God. And I recommend him to my children, solemnly charging them, as they will answer it at the last day, to make it their first care, to seek peace with God, and reconciliation through Christ crucified; and being reconciled, to make it their perpetual study to please him in all things. It is my repeated charge to you all, follow God; follow him early, follow him fully. I have oft devoted you, as I could, to God; and there is nothing I have so much at heart as to have this stand, that ye may indeed be the Lord’s. O that God himself may determine your tender hearts to seek him early, and he will be a good portion, and see well to you.
As for my body, I commit it to the dust under the care of the keeper of Israel; expecting and hoping that that quickning spirit, who is the spirit of the head, and actuates all the members of his mystical body, will in due time, quicken my mortal body: and for my spirit, I commit it unto the Lord Jesus, with whom I have entrusted it long ago: and I will end with Stephen, crying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
Tho. Haliburton.
3. Soon after he said, “I confess God has been beating me in a mortar this long time; but he has been doing much work. My soul is even as a weaned child. I am loosed from all my enjoyments. My heart is disengaged even from my dearest wife and children, but I have put them in a good hand.”
To a friend he said, “There is a sweet composure in the Lord. The beams of the house are, as goodly cedar. I am laying down my tabernacle to resume it again. O for grace to be faithful unto death! After we have gone through many things, we have still need to wait on God till the last. For he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.”
Then he said to the physician, “I fancy my feet are growing cold: yea all the parts of this body are going to ruin. You may believe a man stepping into eternity. I am not acting as a fool. I have weighed eternity this night. I have looked on death in every circumstance that is terrible to nature. And under the view of all these, I found, that in the way of God there is not only a rational satisfaction, but a power that engages and rejoices the heart. I have narrow thoughts: I am like to be overwhelmed, and, I know not where I am, when I think on what I am to be, and what I am to see. I have long desired and prayed for it.”
*Some time after he said, “O sirs, I dread mightily, that a rational sort of religion is coming in among us, a religion that consists wholly in moral duties and ordinances, without the power of godliness, a way of serving God which is mere deism, having no relation to Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God.”
To a minister that came from Edinburgh, he said, “Come and see your friend in the best case you ever saw him in, longing for a deliverance, and hasting to the coming of the day of God. I sent for you, to encourage you to preach the gospel in an ill world, and to stand by Christ, who had been so good to me. This is the best pulpit that ever I was in. I am now laid on this bed for this end, that I may commend my Lord.”
6. Saturday, September 20. In the morning when a minister asked how he was, he answered, “I am composed, waiting for him.” He replied, “You see how kindly he deals with you: he gives you both heavenly exercise and heavenly enjoyments: he deals so tenderly with you, that you have little to do but to praise.” He answer’d, “I have reason to desire the help of all to praise him. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, magnify his holy name!”