I come now to the period of my delivering up a sacred trust into the hands of Him who committed it to me. Jack had lingered long, and sunk very gradually; but now he faded apace. His eldest sister, a very decided Romanist, came over for the purpose of seeing him, and to take care that he had "the rites of the church." Had the abbÉ remained, it is probable we should have soon found ourselves deep in controversy; for, as priest, he never should have crossed my threshold, to bring upon my house the curse attached to idolatrous worship: and there was happily no other within reach. Jack requested me to promise him in his sister's presence that no Romish priest should come near him: I willingly did so; and moreover informed her that if she was herself dying and asked for one, he would not be admitted under my roof. The abomination that maketh desolate stands in many places where it ought not, but where I have authority it never did, nor by God's grace ever shall. I have toleration full and free for every form of Christianity, but none for antichrist, come in what form he may.

It may be possible to describe a glorious summer sunset, with all the softening splendor that it sheds around; but to describe the setting of my dumb boy's sun of mortal life is impossible. He declined like the orb of day, gently, silently, gradually, yet swiftly, and gathered new beauties as he approached the horizon. His sufferings were great, but far greater his patience; and nothing resembling a complaint ever escaped him. When appearing in the morning, with pallid, exhausted looks, if asked whether he had slept, he would reply, with a sweet smile, "No, Jack no sleep; Jack think good Jesus Christ see poor Jack. Night dark; heaven all light; soon see heaven. Cough much now, pain bad; soon no cough, no pain." This was his usual way of admitting how much he suffered, always placing in contrast the glory to be revealed in him, and which, seemed already revealed to him. Knowing that his recovery was impossible, I refrained, with his full concurrence, from having him tormented with miscalled alleviations, such as opiates, bloodletting, and so forth. All that kindness and skill could effect was gratuitously done for him, and every thing freely supplied by our medical friends; but they admitted that no permanent relief could be given, and I always hold it cruel to imbitter the dying season with applications that in the end increase the sufferings they temporarily subdue. This plan kept the boy's mind clear and calm; the ever-present Saviour being to him instead of all soothing drugs. Sometimes when greatly oppressed, he has had leeches; and I remember once half a dozen were put on his side, at his own request. The inflammation was very great; the torture dreadful as they drew it to the surface; and I was called to him, as he sat grasping the arm of a chair, and writhing convulsively. He said to me, "Very, very pain; pain bad, soon kill;" and he seemed half wild with agony. Looking up in my face, he saw me in tears; and instantly assumed his sweetest expression of countenance, saying in a calm, leisurely way, that his pain was much, but the pain the Lord suffered much more: his was only in his side; the Lord suffered in his side, his hands, his feet, and head. His pain would be over in half an hour, the Lord's lasted many hours; he was "bad Jack," the Lord was "good Jesus Christ." Then again he observed the leeches made very little holes in his skin, and drew out a little blood; but the thorns, the nails, the spear, tore the Lord's flesh, and all his blood gushed out—it was shed to save him; and he raised his eyes, lifted his clasped hands, turned his whole face up towards heaven, saying, "Jack loves, loves, very loves good Jesus Christ!" When another violent pang made him start and writhe a little, he recovered in a moment, nodded his head, and said, "Good pain, make Jack soon go heaven."

His sublime idea of the "red hand" was ever present. He had told me some years before, that when he had lain a good while in the grave, God would call aloud, "Jack!" and he would start, and say, "Yes, me Jack." Then he would rise, and see multitudes standing together, and God sitting on a cloud with a very large book in his hand—he called it "Bible book"—and would beckon him to stand before him while he opened the book, and looked at the top of the pages, till he came to the name of John B——. In that page he told me, God had written all his "bads," every sin he had ever done: and the page was full. So God would look, and strive to read it, and hold it to the sun for light, but it was all "no, no nothing, none." I asked him in some alarm if he had done no bad. He said yes, much bads; but when he first prayed to Jesus Christ he had taken the book out of God's hand, found that page, and pulling from his palm something which he described as filling up the hole made by the nail, had allowed the wound to bleed a little, passing his hand down the page so that, as he beautifully said, God could see none of Jack's bads, only Jesus Christ's blood. Nothing being thus found against him, God would shut the book, and there he would remain standing before him, till the Lord Jesus came, and saying to God, "My Jack," would put his arm around him, draw him aside, and bid him stand with the angels till the rest were judged.

All this he told me with the placid but animated look of one who is relating a delightful fact: I stood amazed, for rarely had the plan of a sinner's ransom, appropriation, and justification, been so perspicuously set forth in a pulpit, as here it was by a poor deaf and dumb peasant boy, whose broken language was eked out by signs. He often told it to others, always making himself understood, and often have I seen the tears starting from a rough man's eye as he followed the glowing representation. Jack used to sit silent and thoughtful for a long time together in his easy-chair, when too weak to move about, and then catching my eye, to say with a look of infinite satisfaction, "Good red hand." I am persuaded that it was his sole and solid support; he never doubted, never feared, because his view of Christ's all-sufficiency was so exceedingly clear and realizing. It certainly never entered his head to question God's love to him. One night a servant went to his room, long after he had gone to bed: he was on his knees at the window, his hands and face held up towards a beautiful starlight sky. He did not perceive the servant's entrance: and next morning when I asked him about it, he told me that God was walking above, upon the stars; and that he went to the window and held up his head that God might look down into it and see how very much he loved Jesus Christ.

All his ideas were similar—all turned on the one theme so dear to him; and their originality was inexhaustible. What could be finer than his notion of the lightning, that it was produced by a sudden opening and shutting of God's eye—or of the rainbow, that it was the reflection of God's smile? What more graphic than his representation of Satan's malice and impotence, when, one evening, holding his finger to a candle, he snatched it back, as if burnt, pretending to be in great pain, and said, "Devil like candle." Then with a sudden look of triumph he added, "God like wind," and with a most vehement puff at once extinguished the light. When it was rekindled he laughed and said, "God kill devil."

He told me that God was always sitting still with the great book in his hand, and the Lord Jesus looking down for men, and crying to them, "Come, man; come, pray." That the devil drew them back from listening, and persuaded them to spit up towards him, which was his sign for rebellion and contempt; but if at last a man snatched his hand from Satan, and prayed to the Lord Jesus, he went directly, took the book, found the name, and passed the "red hand" over the page; on seeing which Satan would stamp and cry. He gave very grotesque descriptions of the evil spirit's mortification, and always ended by bestowing on him a hearty kick. From seeing the effect, in point of watchfulness, prayer, and zeal, produced on this young Christian by such continual realization of the presence of the great tempter, I have been led to question very much the policy, not to say the lawfulness, of excluding that terrible foe as we do from our general discourse. It seems to be regarded a manifest impropriety to name him, except with the most studied circumlocution, as though we were afraid of treating him irreverently; and he who is seldom named will not often be thought of. Assuredly it is a great help to him in his countless devices to be so kept out of sight. We are prone to speak, to think, to act, as though we had only our own evil natures to contend with, including perhaps a sort of general admission that something is at work to aid the cause of rebellion; but it was far otherwise with Jack. If only conscious of the inward rising of a sullen or angry temper, he would immediately conclude that the devil was trying to make him grieve the Lord; and he knelt down to pray that God would drive him away. The sight of a drunken man affected him deeply: he would remark that the devil had drawn that man to the ale- house, put the cup into his hand with an assurance that God did not see, or did not care; and was now pushing him about to show the angels he had made that wretched being spit at the authority of the Lord. In like manner with all other vices, and some seeming virtues. As an instance of the latter, he knew a person who was very hostile to the gospel, and to the best of his power hindered it, but who nevertheless paid the most punctual regard to all the formalities of external public worship. He almost frightened me by the picture he drew of that person's case, saying the devil walked to church with him, led him into a pew, set a hassock prominently forward for him to kneel on, put a handsome prayer- book into his hand; and while he carefully followed all the service kept clapping him on the shoulder, saying, "A very good pray." I told this to a pious minister, who declared it was the most awfully just description of self-deluding formality, helped on by Satan, that ever he heard of. When partaking of the Lord's supper, Jack told me that his feeling was "very, very love Jesus Christ; very, very, very hate devil: go, devil!" and with holy indignation he motioned, as it were, the enemy from him. He felt that he had overcome the accuser by the blood of the Lamb. Oh that we all may take a lesson of wisdom from this simple child of God.

During the winter months he sunk daily: his greatest earthly delight was in occasionally seeing Mr. Donald, for whom he felt the fondest love, and who seemed to have a presentiment of the happy union in which they would together soon rejoice before the Lord. Jack was courteous in manner, even to elegance; most graceful; and being now nineteen, tall and large, with the expression of infantine innocence and sweetness on a very fine countenance, no one could look on him without admiration, nor treat him with roughness or disrespect: but Donald's tenderness of manner was no less conspicuous than his; and I have watched that noble- minded Christian man waiting on the dying youth, as he sat patiently reclining in his chair—for he could not lie down—and the grateful humility with which every little kindness was received, until I almost forgot what the rude unfeeling world was in that beautiful contemplation. How much the fruit in God's garden is beautified by the process that ripens it.

Jack labored anxiously to convert his sister; and as she could not read at all, the whole controversy was carried on by signs. Mary was excessively mirthful, Jack unboundedly earnest; and when her playful reproaches roused his Irish blood, the scene was often very comic. I remember he was once bringing a long list of accusations against her priest, for taking his mother's money, making the poor fast while the rich paid for dispensations to eat, inflicting cruel penances, drinking too much whiskey, and finally telling the people to worship wooden and breaden gods. To all this Mary attended with perfect good-humor, and then told him the same priest had christened him and made crosses upon him. Jack wrathfully intimated that he was then a baby, with a head like a doll's, and knew nothing; but if he had been wise he would have kicked his little foot into the priest's mouth. The controversy grew so warm that I had to part them. His horror of the priests was solely directed against their false religion; when I told him of one being converted, he leaped about for joy.

At the commencement of the year 1831 he was evidently dying; and we got a furlough for his brother to visit him. Poor Pat never went to bed but twice during the fortnight he was there, so bitterly did he grieve over the companion of his early days; and many a sweet discourse passed between them on the subject of the blessed hope that sustained the dying Christian. He only survived Pat's departure four days. On the third of February the last symptoms came on; the death-damps began to ooze out, his legs were swelled to the size of his body, and he sat in that state, incapable of receiving warmth, scarcely able to swallow, yet clear, bright, and tranquil, for thirty hours. The morning of the last day was marked by such a revival of strength that he walked across the room with little help, and talked incessantly to me, and to all who came near him. He told me, among other things, that once God destroyed all men by rain, except those in the ark; and that he would soon do it again, not with water but with fire. He described the Lord as taking up the wicked by handfuls, breaking them, and throwing them into a fire; repeating, "All bads, all bads go fire." I asked if he was not bad; "Yes, Jack bad very." Would he be thrown into the fire? "No; Jesus Christ loves poor Jack." He then spoke rapturously of the "red hand," of the angels he should soon be singing with, of the day when Satan should be cast into the pit, and of the delight he should have in seeing me again. He prayed for his family, begged me to teach Mary to read the Bible, to warn Pat against bad example, to bring up my brother's boys to love Jesus Christ, and lastly he repeated over and over again the fervent injunction to love Ireland, to pray for Ireland, to write books for "Jack's poor Ireland," and in every way to oppose Popery. He called it "Roman," always; and it was a striking sight, that youth all but dead, kindling into the most animated, stern, energetic warmth of manner, raising his cold, damp hands, and spelling with them the words, "Roman is a lie." "One Jesus Christ, one," meaning he was the only Saviour; "Jack's one Jesus Christ;" and then with a force as if he would have the characters impressed on his hands, he reiterated, as slowly as possible, his dying protest, "Roman is A LIE!" Very sweetly he thanked me for all my care; and now he seemed to bequeath to me his zeal against the destroyer of his people. The last signs of removal came on in the evening; his sight failed, he rubbed his eyes, shook his head, and then smiled with conscious pleasure. At last he asked me to let him lie down on the sofa where he had been sitting, and saying very calmly, "A sleep," put his hand into mine, closed his eyes, and breathed his spirit forth so gently, that it was difficult to mark the precise moment of that joyful change.

I still hope to throw into a volume the numerous particulars that remain untold concerning this boy; and I will not now dwell upon the subject longer. God had graciously kept me faithful to my trust; and I surrendered it, not without most keenly feeling the loss of such a companion, but with a glow of adoring thankfulness that overcame all selfish regrets. Thenceforth my lot was to be cast among strangers, and sorely did I miss the comforting, sympathizing monitor who for seven years had been teaching me more than I could teach him; but all my prayers had been answered, all my labors crowned; and with other duties before me I was enabled to look at the past, to thank God, and to take courage.