Page:Interesting particulars of the last moments, and execution, of Moses M'Donald.pdf/6

( 6 ) were sung, and Mr. Hercus, Dr. Gilchrist, and Mr. Steel, prayed with him in succession. He then deliberately thanked them for their instructions and prayers, and acknowledged his obligations to the humanity and kindness of the Magistrates. Upon which he mounted the platform, and the two last mentioned ministers retired.

During the whole of this awful transaction, the man himself appeared perfectly firm and unmoved. In Christian charity, we should indulge the hope that his firmness was not merely the effects of a constitutional insensibility, but was, at least in part, the effect of that trust which he declared he had been led, by the word and grace of God to repose in the mercy of God in Jesus Christ.

He is gone to his own place: and it belongs not to us to Judge; though we would fondly hope that his repentance was sincere, and his trust in mercy well founded.

God grant that this man’s dreadful end may have a salutary effect on the minds of the riotous and unprincipled,and on the minds of all who are in danger of being corrupted and ruined by bad company.

How deceitful is the heart of the sinner! How willing to flatter itself with the hope of always escaping detection and punishment! Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily his heart is fully set in him to do evil. A man who has not the fear of God may receive repeated warnings in the punishment of his companions or in diseases or dangers which befall himself, and his conscience may smite him for his sins; but yet he will persist in his evil ways, until his fear come as a desolation, and his destruction as a whirlwind. Oh, that men would choose the fear of the Lord! but fools hate knowledge and despise reproof. Therefore shall they be filled with their own devises. Their very prosperity shall destroy them.

Such were some of the reflections which this unhappy occasionally uttered in prison, often did he