Conscious that in the course of nature his decease could not be far distant, death was now his frequent meditation. He viewed its approach without levity and without alarm. Familiar through life with death in every form, his feelings were not blunted; he still felt it was a solemn thing to die, but he had experienced the love of Him who had tasted death for every man, and was no longer “subject to bondage through fear of death.” He continued his pastoral visits to the sick and dying to the last, and some of those who were raised from a bed of languishing, and who survived their pastor, speak of the affectionate kindness, the delicacy and tenderness, as well as the deep-toned spirituality of mind he showed in the sick chamber, as something which those who had not witnessed it would be backward to credit. One of the last letters which he penned filled three sides of folio paper, addressed to a friend who had met with a severe accident in being thrown from a carriage; it contained the most consoling and Scriptural aids and admonitions; it was unfortunately lost by its possessor on a voyage to India, or it would have proved, we are assured, an acquisition to our memoir, of real interest and importance.
As he stepped out of his gig, his family easily perceived from his manner if he had been visiting the chamber of death, and never presumed to break a sacred silence that was sure to follow his deep-drawn sigh till he was pleased to do so himself. This he did in general by the solemn and subdued utterance of a text from Scripture, or some verse of a favourite hymn. The tears often fell down his aged cheeks while slowly articulating, in a suppressed voice, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord;” or from one of Watts’s hymns.
“Oh could we die with those that die,” etc.
After this touching relief he seemed to feel more at liberty to speak on future events connected with his own decease, when he should be sitting down, as he frequently said, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God. Indeed his happy, social spirit led him to connect the joys of heaven with the society of saints and patriarchs and his own departed friends. Sitting at dinner with the bishop and others as his guests, his mind abstracted itself from the surrounding scene, and he addressed the Christian friend to whose notices of his last days we have already had recourse: “You know, madam, you and I are to take an alphabetical list some day of all the names of the good men I expect soon to meet in heaven; there will be (counting them up upon his fingers) John Wesley, Isaac Watts, the two Milners, Joseph and Isaac, John Newton and Thomas Scott, Mr. Howels of Long Acre, and Matthew Henry——” Here the conversation of the party broke off the solemn reverie.
Yet all this tranquillity was consistent with that natural fear of death which for the wisest purposes God has implanted in man, and which Adam must have known in paradise, or else the Divine prohibition and the threatened penalty, “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” could have had no force and appealed to no motive. “In the month of September, after his last voyage, he called at the house of his friend, the Rev. Mr. Cartwright, with a young lady from New Zealand, to introduce her to Mrs. Cartwright. The door was opened by his aged and now deeply afflicted friend and brother in the ministry, for Mrs. Cartwright had expired in the night, after a few hours’ illness. Mr. Marsden, with his usual cheerfulness of manner, said, ‘Well! I have brought Miss W. to introduce her to Mrs. Cartwright.’ ‘Stop! stop, my friend,’ responded the mourner, in a solemn manner, ‘don’t you know that Mrs. Cartwright is dead?’ ‘Dead? dead?’ replied Mr. Marsden. ‘Oh no; oh no. You must be in joke; it is too serious a matter to make a joke of, Mr. Cartwright.’ ‘Indeed,’ responded Mr. Cartwright, ‘it is too true. Come, and I will convince you,’ and then led him to the room where the remains of his departed wife lay. Mr. Marsden approached the body, saying, ‘Oh! she is not dead; no, no, she is not dead;’ (the bright complexion remaining unchanged), ‘she is not dead;’ and then, passing his hand over the face, the cold chill of death dissipated the delusion. ‘Yes, she is dead, she is dead,’ and leaving the room, he hurried away to give vent to his feelings.”
As he contemplated his own near approach to the eternal state, a few chosen passages of Scripture fell often from his lips; and it was remarked they were almost the only repetitions he made use of; for his mind was richly stored with Scripture, which he seemed to bring forth with endless variety, and often in the happiest combination; but now he often repeated the words of Job, “He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not,” chap. xiv. 2. And those of Zechariah, “Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever?” chap. i. 5.
Like Cornelius, he had been a devout man, a man of prayer through life. He believed in the promises of effectual aid from God the Holy Spirit, to carry on the work of grace in his own soul. Nerved with this faith, he waged a ceaseless war against corruptions within, and temptations from without. And while he viewed the promises of assistance from the Holy Spirit, as given not to supersede our own exertions, but to animate them, he simply trusted to Him to become the author of his complete sanctification. And all the blessed fruits of faith were found richly clustering round his character. It was his constant habit, after his return from a journey, to spend some time in his room alone, engaged, no doubt, in holy communing with God. When he prayed in the family, or before his sermon in the pulpit, where he seldom used a form, the rich and fervid unction, the variety and copiousness of his supplications and thanksgivings, seemed to intimate how closely he had been wont to commune in secret with his heavenly Father. The fifty-first Psalm now often supplied the words for many a humble confession of sin, and many an earnest aspiration for larger supplies of the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying influences, both in the pulpit and elsewhere. He appears always to have held frequent communion with God in ejaculatory prayer throughout the day. To one whose engagements were so many, and whose interruptions were necessarily so frequent, the practice was no doubt most beneficial. Thus the lamp of God in his soul was always trimmed, and the light went not out as age and infirmities drew on. His friends now remarked his frequent abstraction from the scenes around, while his moving lip and solemn gesture significantly intimated the direction of his mind, and the occupation of his thoughts. His mind became daily more spiritual, and even when in the midst of visitors he seemed often to be absorbed in silent prayer.
“An incident which seems to show that he had a presentiment of his approaching end occurred on the last Sunday on which the holy communion was administered before his death. Although in his usual health, he did not assist in the service, as he always had done for a long period of forty-five years in the same congregation; and when the officiating minister was ready to distribute the bread and wine, he remained in his pew, apparently overcome by his feelings. A pause ensued, when, as he still did not attempt to move, the Rev. Henry Bobart, his son-in-law, thought it advisable to take the elements to him. Many of his congregation were affected to tears, impressed with the belief that they might not again receive from his venerable hands those emblems of the Saviour’s love. He had never yet been present at the church without assisting at the solemn rite. Such fears were but too truly and sadly realized. On the Sunday evening, at the parsonage, it was the custom, at family worship, to read one of a course of sermons. The Sunday before his death, when he was still apparently as well as usual, he requested that the one in course for that evening might be laid aside and Bradley’s sermon the ‘Morrow unknown,’ from the text ‘Boast not thyself of to-morrow,’ substituted. Some slight objection was made; but on his again expressing his wish, it was of course complied with. The remarks made by him upon the subject during the evening excited the apprehensions of his family that the coming week might be one of trial, but they little thought that ere the next sabbath one so loved and revered would be removed from them.”
On Tuesday the 8th of May, 1838, a few of his friends visited him at his own house; he wore his usual cheerfulness, and they wished him, as they thought, a short farewell as he stepped into his gig on a journey of about five and-twenty-miles. In passing through the low lands contiguous to Windsor, the cold suddenly affected him, and he complained of illness on his arrival at the house of his friend, the Rev. Mr. Styles, the chaplain of the parish. Erysipelas in the head broke out, and a general stupor followed, so that he became insensible. His mind wandered amongst the scenes to which his life had been devoted, and he uttered a few incoherent expressions about the factory, the orphan school, and the New Zealand mission. “Though he spoke but little,” says his friend, Mr. Styles, in his funeral sermon, “yet in his few conscious moments he said quite enough to show that the Saviour whom he served through life was with him in the time of trial. A single remark was made to him by a bystander on the value of a good hope in Christ in the hour of need. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘that hope is indeed precious to me now;’ and on the following evening, his last on earth, he was heard repeating the words ‘precious, precious,’ as if still in the same strain of thought which that remark had suggested. Soon after, inflammation having reached the brain, his spirit was released. On Saturday morning, the 12th of May, he entered—who can doubt?—upon the enjoyment of his ‘eternal and exceeding great reward.’”