Page:Account of the bravery and happy death of James Covey.pdf/4

 whole of his history and experience. He was surprised to find that I had never received any information about him at the time the sermon was preached, which so exactly met his case. Something more than twelve months after this time, he was received a member of our church, having given satisfactory evidences of being a genuine and consistent Christian. A few weeks since, hearing he was ill, I went to visit him. When I entered his room, he said, "Come in, thou man of God! I have been longing to see you, and to tell you the happy state of my mind. I believe I shall soon die: but death now has no terrors in it. The sting of death is sin; but, thanks be to God! he has given me the victory through Jesus Christ. I am going to heaven! O! what has Jesus done for me, one of the vilest sinners of the human race!"—A little before he died, when he thought himself within a few hours of dissolution, he said, "I have often thought it was a hard thing to die, but now I find it a very easy thing to die. The presence of Christ makes it easy. The joy I feel from a sense of the love of God to sinners, from the thought of being with the Saviour, of being free from a sinful heart, and of enjoying the presence of God for ever, is more than I can express! O how different my thoughts of God, and of myself, and of another world, from what they were when I lost my precious limbs on board the Venerable! It was a precious loss to me! If I had not lost my legs, I should perhaps have lost my soul!"—With elevated and clasped hands, and with eyes glistening with earnestness, through the tears which flowed down his face, he said, "O, my dear minister, I pray you, when I am dead, to preach a funeral sermon for a poor sailor; and tell others, especially sailors, who are as ignorant and as wicked as I was, that poor blaspheming Covey found mercy with God, through faith in the blood of Christ! Tell them, that since I have found mercy, none that seek it need to despair. You know better than I do what to say to them! But, oh! be in earnest with them; and may the Lord grant that my wicked neighbours and fellow-sailors may find mercy as well as Covey!"—He said much more; but the last words he uttered were "Hallelujah! Hallelujah."