those who meet, rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. The spirits in prison are not less, though differently, affected by the arrival of a poor, miserable, guilty, malignant spirit among them. Like Dives, they dread the increase of their numbers, which adds poignancy to their torments. The prophet forewarned the king of BabyIon, that hell from beneath should be moved at his coming."

" When saints arrive in heaven, they are without doubt severally conducted to the mansions which Christ has gone before to prepare for them. And those who have acted a better part on the stage of life, and done more good in the world than others, may be rewarded according to their works, by having better seats assigned them ; that is, by being placed nearer the throne of God, and the personal presence of Christ." —" As the principalities and powers in heavenly places may be seated above the patriarchs, the prophets and apostles, so these may be seated above common Christians, who will bo in the same manner locally distinguished and favored according to what they had done and suffered for the honor of Christ." — " They will feel that gratitude to their Redeemer which angels cannot feel, and sing that song of praise which angels can never learn, and will give Christ a pleasure which angels cannot give him. Their peculiar love to Christ will excite his peculiar love to them, and move him to put them into the best mansions in his Father's house, where they must be the happiest of created beings."

In his Memoir of himself, after grouping together the afflictions of his later life, he says, — and this is near the last, perhaps it is the very last, passage which he wrote in his Autobiography: " I now enjoy, as I have generally enjoyed, a good state of health, and have good reason to say, ' Hitherto the Lord hath helped me.' I know the time of my departure is at hand ; and I think I can say with some sincerity, I have fought a good fight, I have nearly finished my course, J have kept the faith, and cherish a comfortable hope, that I shall finally receive that crown of righteousness, which awaits all the faithful ministers and followers of Christ."

Conversing on the probability of his speedy removal, the simplehearted pilgrim said: " When I first enter heaven, I shall feel ashamed of myself, that I have done no more good on earth." — Again, " When I first enter heaven, I shall say, By the grace of God I am what I am, and where I am."

On another occasion, in the same view of his speedy departure, Dr. Ide describes him as saying: " I want to go to heaven. It is an inexpressibly glorious place. The more I think of it, the more delightful it appears." After expressing his desire to behold the exhibition of divine glory iu the upper world, he added: " And I want to see who is there ; I want to see brother Sanford, and brother Niles, and brother Spring, and Dr. Hopkins, and Dr. West, and a great many other ministers with whom I have been associated in this world, but who have gone before mc. I believe I shall meet them in heaven, and it seems to me our meeting there must be peculiarly interesting." — "I want to see, too, the old prophets and the apostle* What a society there will be in heaven! There we shall see such men as Moses, and Isaiah, and Elijah, and Daniel, and Paul. I want to see Paul more than any other man I can think of." —" I do love the gospel. It appears to me more and more wonderful and glorious every day. I think I now understand something about the gospel; but I expect, if I ever get to heaven, to understand a great deal more." — The question in some form or other, was suggested, Whether he was certain of obtaining salvation ? He replied, " I cannot say, I am certain that I shall be saved ; but I have no doubt on the subject." — "I have an assurance of faith. I can say, I do know that the doctrines which I have preached are true. And I can almost say, I have an assurance of hope. I have no doubt that, through Jesus Christ, I shall be saved." —' He often,' as his son-in-law remarks, ' spoke of Christ as the only foundation of his hope, and he described the satisfaction which he felt at the thought of being saved through him alone.'

• He frequently,' Dr. Ide continues, ' expressed surprise that God spared him so long; and although he uniformly appeared to be patient with the continuance of life, and often expressed his conviction that long life was a blessing; yet there were times when he evidently desired to depart. Some days before his last sickness, he was suddenly taken ill, and fears were entertained by his friends that he would not recover. While one of them was conversing with him in the evening, he said, " I hope I shall be permitted to go, if it may be the will of God, before morning." But during the night he revived, and in the morning was much better. He said to the same individual, " I am sensibly relieved, and I may be spared some time longer, but I cannot help feeling disappointed."'

Though a submissive veneration was the most obvious feature in his religious developments, yet I have sometimes heard him converse on the heavenly state with the familiarity of one whose thoughts found their home in the skies, and with the artlessncss of one who did not query with himself how his thoughts would appear if made known to the world. ' I have no doubt,' he once remarked to me, ' that spirits will know each other in the coming life — and how many inquiries shall we have to make of each other! It will be pleasant to see and converse with Adam and Noah, and the patriarchs; but I think I shall be as anxious to be introduced to the apostle Paul, and Martin Luther, as to any one who has gone there before me.' I can never lose the impression made upon me when, at the age of ninety-four, he spoke of his decease, which he must speedily accomplish; and said with a child-like diffidence, and with the simplicity of a great man, ' I confess that I look forward with interest to the time when I shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. I have a great curiosity to look upon David and Isaiah ; and I long to talk with Paul. Paul was a wonderful man. But especially will Jesus Christ and God fill my thoughts. I do not know, however, that I shall be saved. If another man should be the subject of all my exercises, I think I should have a hope of him. But it is a great thing to be allowed to enter heaven. Perhaps I shall be shut out. But if I am not saved, I shall be disappointed.' The semi-tone with which this last word was uttered, the rigid pressure of his lips, and the long pause that followed it, bespoke at once the humility, faith, and submission which he had cherished in his bosom, as a jewel too precious for the promiscuous gaze. I left him a few moments afterward with the profoundest reverence for his piety, and I never saw him more. There was something in his silence, — in what he did not utter, except with his significant eye, — that beggars description.

§ 2. His Decline and Death.

After his ninetieth year the internal cancerous affection which finally terminated his life, began to debilitate him. ' His bodily strength,' says Dr. Ide, ' failed in slow degrees, and although on the whole he continued to enjoy a remarkable flow of spirits, yet there were short intervals when his usual vivacity was suspended. During a portion of every day he would appear dull, and sometimes would remain for hours in a gentle slumber. At other times he would be wakeful, lively, and as bright as in the days of his youth. Even until the period when he became unable to speak, there were intervals when his judgment appeared as sound, his conversation as full of practical wisdom, as at any former period.

' He spent his time principally in reading, until he became too weak to endure this exercise. At the age of ninety-one and two, it is believed that he devoted as much time to books as most ministers do in the meridian of life. Though he could not long remember what he read, yet he appeared to understand it as well, and to enjoy it as highly as ever; and it afforded him fresh topics of interesting conversation with his friends from day to day. At this late period, he not only made himself acquainted with the leading periodicals of the time, but he also encountered many a massy volume. "Wben he became unable to read, he would listen attentively to the reading of his friends. During the last year of his life, he seldom attempted to use his own eyes on the printed page, but would attend for consecutive hours to the books read to him by his attendants. When visited by his grandchildren, he would spend a part of the time in amusing and instructive conversation, and then request them to read or sing to him.' It is an interesting fact that, as he early acquired a fondness for sacred song, so he did not lose his musical taste until his dying day.

This dying day did come at last. After having lived the life of a selfscrutinizing and self-suspecting Christian for seventy years, having been far more conversant than the majority of our best men, with those aweinspiring themes, Sovereignty, Decrees, Reprobation, Justice, Eternal Penalty, Disinterested Submission, he was at length told that his end drew near, and he must soon stand in the presence of his Judge. " I am ready," was his reply ; and to those who knew him, he could not have uttered more consoling, more satisfying words. They were the index of his decided, matured, considerate hope; a hope formed under the influence, not of the promises merely, but of the threatcnings also; not solely of God's forbearance, but also of his inflexible rectitude. It was the hope of a man looking to the cross indeed, but also to the august and pure throne; of one who had exalted the gospel, and magnified the law. Had he been less rigid and unbending in his enforcement of the stern precepts which come from Sinai, less cautious and reverent in his exposure of those religious feelings that are almost too sacred to be exposed, the three words, "I am ready," had not been so full of meaning; but now they were the history of the man, of his past fears, his present hopes. He measured his syllables, and shrunk back from the least parade of piety. And if, after the application of his rigid tests, he dared to express a hope, even a trembling hope, of receiving a welcome to paradise, we instinctively repose a steadier confidence in that hope, than if it had not passed through so protracted and fiery a trial.

' During his last sickness, he would say but little. His throat was in such a state, that he could seldom utter an intelligible word. He appeared, in general, to enjoy the perfect use of his reason, and several times he seemed very desirous of communicating something to those who stood near him, and made a great effort to speak articulately and distinctly. But his meaning could only now and then be ascertained. A few hours before he died, he turned his eyes upon one who sat by his bed, and addressed him with great earnestness for some time. It was peculiarly painful to behold him striving in vain to make himself understood, and no small disappointment to his friends not to know what he would say in his departing moments. But he had left nothing to be done in a dying hour. He had given his friends and the world entire satisfaction in regard to his own preparation for heaven. They had repeatedly heard from bis lips when in health, all, and more than all, which any man could impart in death.

'It is gratifying, however, to know that up to the time when the power of speech was taken away, his conversation was such as to indicate a readiness to meet his change. He was asked if he expected to recover, and he answered " No." He was asked if he had any fear of death. His answer was, "I cannot say that I have no dread of the passage through the dark valley; but I am not afraid of what is beyond." " Your hope then sustains you in this trying hour," replied his friend. " O yes, I believe that I shall be accepted. I shall be greatly disappointed if I am not." He was asked if he was desirous " to depart and be with Christ." His answer seemed to indicate some remains of an instinctive dread of the agonies of death, while it showed that his heart was in heaven. "I don't wish to die to-day, nor tomorrow ; but the thought that I shall soon be gone gives me pleasure." He always had a very great dread of pain, or bodily suffering. It was his desire, if it might be the will of God, to have an easy passage from the earth. And during his sickness he frequently expressed his gratitude that he went down so gently, and his hope that his removal might be without a severe struggle. But it was the will of God that he should taste the bitterness of death. During the night previous to his departure, his distress for breath was frequently very great. Just before the closing scene, however, he was comparatively free from pain, and when he actually left the world, it was with so little alteration in his appearance that no one in the room could tell when he ceased to breathe.

' On Wednesday, the twenty-third of September, 1840, about three o'clock in the morning, his spirit took its upward night. Though this event had been for some time daily expected, yet when it came it produced a sensation which could not be anticipated. Every one felt that a great and good man had fallen, that a valuable friend had been taken away, and that the community had sustained an irreparable loss. "The glory is departed," was written upon the walls of his house, and desolation marked the place of his former residence.' — Dr. lde's Memoir, pp. 123,124.

On the day of Emmons's death, he had reached the age of ninety-five years, four months and twenty-two days.

§ 3. The Solemnities that followed his Death.

At eleven o'clock on Monday, the twenty-eighth of September, fortyfive clergymen assembled at the Franklin parsonage to look, for the last time, upon the face with which some of them had been familiar for half a century. Rev. David Long of Milford, offered a prayer at the house,