We might be tempted to omit the whole subject, and put
the plain question — '^Do you think that thoughtlessness
concerning death is the best preparation for dying happily?'^
Let a person try to think so. You cannot think this if you
read the Bible ; you cannot think so, because all dying men
warn you not to do it. What a mighty and awful consent of



THE TESTIMONY OF DYING MEN. 305

opinion is there on this subject ; this is the grand uniformity
of religious faith that nothing else can establish. No laws
and governments can do it, but there is a very peculiar
authority in the declaration of dying men ; this is one reason
why many persons do not like to come round the beds of
dying men : their testimony bears down all taunts ; it
assumes a magisterial authority in death. The last declara-
tion reverses all others, as the last will and testament
revokes all made before. Whatever men have said about
Grod and religion, we take their last opinion. You would
take the opinion of a dying man as against ten thousand
opposite opinions. If you had been so much in vain com-
pany, and heard these vain men talk against religion, what-
ever impressions they made (how many are victims and
captives of the opinions of the crowd !) if you heard a dying
man, you would take his opinion in preference; it would
come with an authority obliterating the impression of all
that had been said before, by the largest crowd of men. If
you came from the death of a friend, or one of these vain
men, — yes, if one of themselves gave his opinion, though
you had little dependence on them in general, you would, for
the time, feel that opinion worth all that had been said
before. It seems to be said in the name and the authority
of all the best men on earth, — spoken in the name of all
dying men and of God, — combining a vast host of authority
in himself : compared with this, it would be little to say, like
the possessed man, "My name is legion, for we are many."
A man may say he is expressing the opinion of an immense
company, a perfectly concurring opinion. 