My Lord :- March 10, 1774. .

For six weeks past I have had occasion to spend several hours of almost every day with the sick and the dying. These scenes are to a minister like walking the hospitals to a young surgeon. The various cases which occur exemplify, and vividly explain, many truths, which may be learned indeed at home, but cannot be so well understood, or their force so sensibly felt, without the advantage of experience and observation. As physicians, besides a general knowledge common to them all, have usually their several special branches of study, ministers also, as their gifts differ, are led more closely to consider some particular branch of divine truth.

For myself, if it be lawful to speak of oneself, it is the study of the human heart, with its workings and counter-workings as it is differently affected in the different seasons of prosperity, adversity, conviction, temptation, sickness, and the approach of death. The Lord by sending me hither, provided me a good school for these purposes. I know not where I could have had a greater variety of characters; and as they are mostly a poor people, and strangers to that address which is the result of education and converse with the world, there is a simplicity in what they say or do which gives me a peculiar advantage in judging of their cases.

Though the grand evidence of those truths upon which our hopes are built arises from the authority of God speaking them in His Word and revealing them by His Spirit to the awakened heart (for till the heart is awakened it is incapable of receiving this evidence), yet some of these truths are so deep, so utterly repugnant to the judgment of depraved nature, that, through the influence of unbelief and vain reasoning, the temptations of Satan, and the subtle arguments with which some men reputed wise attack the foundations of our faith, the minds even of believers are sometimes capable of being shaken. I know no better corroborating evidence for the relief of the mind under such assaults than the testimony of dying persons, especially of such as have lived out of the noise of controversy, and who perhaps never heard a syllable of what has been flaunted against the Deity of Christ, His atonement, and other important truths.

Permit me to relate upon this occasion, some things which exceedingly struck me in the conversation I had with a young woman whom I visited in her last illness. She was a sober, prudent person, of plain sense, could read her Bible, but had read little beside; her knowledge of the world was nearly confined to the parish; for I suppose she was seldom, if ever, twelve miles from home in her life. She had known the gospel about seven years before the Lord visited her with a lingering consumption, which at length removed her to a better world. A few days before her death, I had been praying by her bedside, and in my prayer I thanked the Lord that He gave her now to see that she had not followed cunningly devised fables. When I had finished, she repeated, " No, no, not cunningly devised fables-these are realities indeed; I feel their truth, I feel their comfort. Oh, tell my friends, tell my acquaintances, tell inquiring souls, tell poor sinners, tell all the daughters of Jerusalem (alluding to Solomon's Song 5:16, from which she had just before desired me to preach at her funeral), what Jesus has done for my soul. Tell them that now in the time of need I find Him my Beloved and my Friend, and as such, I recommend Him to them."

She then fixed her eyes steadfastly upon me, and proceeded, as well as I can recollect, as follows :" Sir, you are highly favored in being called to preach the gospel. I have often heard you with pleasure ; but give me leave to tell you that I now see all you have said or can say is comparatively but little. Nor till you come into my situation, and have death and eternity full in your view, will it be possible for you to conceive the vast weight and importance of the truths you declare. Oh, sir ! it is a serious thing to die ; no words can express what is needful to support the soul in the solemnity of a dying hour."

I believe it was the next day that I visited her again. After some discourse as usual, she said with a remarkable vehemence of speech, "Are you sure I cannot be mistaken ? " I answered without hesitation, " Yes, I am sure ; I am not afraid to say, my soul for yours, that you are right." She paused a little, and then replied, " You say true, I know I am right. I feel that my hope is fixed upon the Rock of Ages ; I know in whom I have believed. Yet, if you could see with mine eyes, you would not wonder at my question. For the approach of death presents a prospect which is till then hidden from us, and which cannot be described."

She said much more to the same purpose, and in all she spoke there was a dignity, weight, and evidence, which I suppose few professors of divinity have at any time equaled. We may well say with Elihu :" Who teacheth like Him ? "

Many instances of like kind I have met with here. I have a poor girl near me who looks like an idiot, and her natural capacity is indeed very small ; but the Lord has been pleased to make her acquainted with great temptations and proportionately great discoveries of His love and truth. Sometimes, when her heart is enlarged, I listen to her with astonishment. I think no books or ministers I ever met with have given me such an impression and understanding of what the apostle styles ta bathe tou theou (the deep things of God), as I have upon some occasions received from her conversation.

But I am rambling. My attendance upon the sick is not always equally comfortable, but could I learn aright, it might be equally instructive. Some confirm the preciousness of our Saviour by the cheerfulness with which, through faith in Him, they meet the king of terrors. Others no less confirm it by the terror and reluctance they manifest when they find they must die ; for though there are too many who sadly slight the blessed gospel while they are in health, yet most are too far enlightened to be quite thoughtless about their souls if they retain their senses in their last illness. Then, like the foolish virgins they say, " Give us of your oil:" then they are willing that ministers and Christian friends should pray with them and speak to them.

Through the Lord's goodness, several whom I have visited in these circumstances have afforded me good hope:they have been savingly changed by His blessing upon what has passed at the eleventh hour. I have seen a marvelous and blessed change take place in their language, views, and tempers, in a few days. I now visit a young person who is cut short in her nineteenth year by a consumption, and I think cannot live many days. I found her very ignorant and insensible, and she remained so a good while ; but of late I hope her heart is touched. She feels her lost state, she seems to have some right desires, she begins to pray, and in such a manner as I cannot but hope the Lord is teaching her, and will reveal Himself to her before she departs.

But it is sometimes otherwise. I saw a young woman die last week :I had been often with her ; but the night she was removed she could only say, " Oh, I cannot live, I cannot live ! " She repeated this mournful complaint as long as she could speak ; for as the vital powers were more oppressed her voice was changed into groans, which grew fainter and fainter, and thus she expired. Poor thing, I thought as I stood by her bedside, if you were a duchess in this situation, what could the world do for you ? I thought, likewise, how many things are there that now give us pleasure or pain, and assume a mighty importance in our view, which, in a dying hour, will be no more to us than the clouds which fly unnoticed over our heads. Then the truth of our Lord's aphorism will be seen, felt and acknowledged, " One thing is needful :and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her."

Your Lordship allows me to send unpremeditated letters. I need not assure you this is one.

Yours, with greatest respect, John Newton