34. Paysons Last Agony.

Paysons Last Agony On Sabbath, Oct. 21, 1827, his last agony commenced, attended with that labored breathing and rattling in the throat which rendered articulation extremely difficult. His daughter was summoned from the Sabbath-school, and received his dying kiss and " God bless you, my daughter." He smiled on a group of his Church-members, and exclaimed, with holy emphasis, " Peace, peace ! Victory !" He smiled on his wife and children, and said in the language of dying Joseph, " I am going, but God will surely be with you."

He rallied from the death conflict, and said to his physician, that although he had suffered the pangs of death, and got almost within the gates of Paradise, yet if it was God’s will that he should come back and suffer still more he was resigned. He passed through a similar scene in the afternoon, and again revived. On Monday morning his dying agonies returned in all their extremity. For three hours every breath was a groan. On being asked if his sufferings were greater than on the preceding Sunday night, he answered, "incomparably greater." He said the greatest temporal blessing of which he could conceive would be one breath of air.

Mrs. Payson, fearing from the expression of suffering on his countenance that he was in mental distress, questioned him. He replied, " Faith and patience hold out." These were the last words of this dying Christian hero ! Yet his eyes spoke after his tongue became motionless. He looked on Mrs. Payson, and then rested his eyes on his eldest son with an expression which said, and was so interpreted by all present, " Behold thy mother!"

He gradually sunk away, till, about the going down of the sun, his chastened and purified spirit, all mantled with the glory of Christian triumph in life and death, ascended to share the everlasting glory of his Redeemer before the eternal throne!

"His ruling passion was strong in death." His love for preaching was as invincible as that of the miser for gold, who dies grasping his treasure.

Dr. Payson directed this label to be attached to his breast: " Remember the words which I spake unto you while I was yet present with you;" that it might be read by all who came to look at his corpse, and by which he, being dead, still spake. The same words, at the request of his people, were engraven on the plate of the coffin, and read by thousands on the day of interment.