The Dying Deist

The Dying Deist

I saw him in the bloom of youth,

Ere he had felt affliction's rod;

He spurned the sacred book of truth,

The glorious gospel of our God;

And scorn'd the Almighty Power above,

Whose eye creation's scope may scan;

And read the source of hate or love,

Within the heart of thankless man.

To him a gracious God had given

To gift of genius, to survey

The wondrous works of earth and heaven,

Spread out in beautiful array;

But ah! Creation to his sight,

Was but a wild, a rude romance;

Sprung from the realms of rayless night,

By dark and undesigning CHANCE.

He saw the charming seasons change,

And flowers bloom out and blush for man;

But in all nature's radiant range,

The MIGHTY MIND he could not scan.

Each spire of grass, each being born,

Should have convinced a mind so wise;

And yet he even laughed to scorn

A suffering Saviour's sacrifice.

I saw the dying Deist roll

Upon an agonizing bed;

Hell's horrors harrow'd up his soul.

His eye-balls starting from his head;

With streaming eyes I saw him stretch

His impious hands to Heaven, in pray'r;

Save! save! Oh! save! he cried, a wretch,

Whose soul is shrouded in despair!

Death's darkst angel o'er him waved

His gloomy wings, to waft away

The sceptic's spirit, and he raged,

And wept, and prayed for one more day.

Philosophy, thou fool! say, where

Was now thy sweet consoling power?

Where was thy balm for his despair,

In dissolution's awful hour?

I saw him gather'd to the grave,

In Christian holiness unborn;

He died cold scepticism's slave,

All unforgiven and forlorn;

With genius worthy heaven's abode,

But with a hopeless heart of pride;

Rent by the awful wrath of God,

The poor unhappy Deist died.

What madness 'tis in man to mar

The joys which God has kindly given;

And blot out Bethlehem's beauteous star,

Whose light illumes our path to heaven!

Tis vain to strive - no power may stay

The will and pleasure of our Lord;

Hell's deep dark dungeons must obey,

And heaven and earth receive his Word.

No. 7 South street, Baltimore.

Milford Bard

New Series 1:33, p. 4

1840.10.17

From the Baltimore Patriot

The young man who is the subject of the following poetical lines, I knew when I was at the University, where he was considered a youth of splendid acquirements and brilliant talents. He read Paine and Voltaire, and unfortunately imbibed their horrible opinions, and believed in their annihilating doctrines. I often remonstrated with him, but being superior to me in point of intellect, he laughed me to scorn, while he ridiculed Christianity, the glory of the world. Ah! said I, your doctrine may do to live with, but it will not do in the awful hour of death, when the greedy grave opens before you. Should you live longer than I, returned the young man, I will show you how a philosopher can die - or, as you term me, a skeptic. Poor fellow! he little thought that I should live to witness his death; one of the most horrible and heart-rending scenes that I ever beheld; and I hope in God that I may never witness such another. Oh! that agonizing look is now before me, and his groans of penitence and terror, and of hopeless misery and remorse, still ring in my ears. God grant that when the things of life are fading from my view, and the vista of the future is opening before me, the sun of my existence may go down without a cloud, and that I may go to the grave in the perfect faith of the glorious gospel, which was instilled into my mind in childhood, at my affectionate and pious mother's knee! God grant that I may never die the death of the Deist, and that I may never know the horrors of him who was my fellow student and friend, who proved the fact, that "with the talents of an angel a man may be a fool!"