Most of the cases of religious communication with dying criminals, recorded in the public prints, are in the highest degree painful. The chaplain goes through the forms of instruction, the sermon is preached, and then, without one proof being assigned of the fitness of the criminal for that solemn ordinance of religion, the sacrament is administered. All the requisitions of our church, as to “those who come to the Lord’s supper,” are passed by. The deep workings of repentance, and longing for amendment, the exercise of a lively faith in Christ, the thankful remembrance of his death, the feeling of universal charity so difficult in such circumstances; in short, every evidence of an awakened and converted heart is neglected, and the man forced upon a hypocritical avowal of truth, to which he is in reality utterly a stranger. He dies, in fact, with “a lie in his right hand”—a lie, the guilt of which is surely divided between himself and the minister who urges him to the rash reception of the sacrament. It is under the deepest conviction of the difficulty of such cases, that the present tract, recording the events of the last eleven days in the life of a criminal is presented to the public. His crimes had been great, but hypocrisy was not amongst their number. His faculties were not such as to give him any peculiar facility in adopting the truths presented to him. He had received no previous religious instruction. He had no uncommon power of utterance. Let the reader judge whether the words and conduct, both before and after conviction, as recorded in these pages, do not supply an evidence of the power of God to reclaim the wanderer even in the eleventh hour; and are not calculated, in the highest degree, to encourage the often disconsolate visitor of the sick, the dying, and the criminal. The facts here recorded have been collected partly by personal communication, partly from letters to the writer from the Rev. W. C. Hall, and partly from a printed account of the Rev. E. Durell. The substance of the statement was first inserted in the Christian Observer, and it is now submitted, with some alteration, to the public, and with an earnest desire that its perusal may, through the Divine blessing, tend to the glory of that compassionate Saviour, to whose service it is dedicated. THE LAST DAYS OF PHILIP JOLIN, LATELY EXECUTED AT ST. HELENS, FOR THE MURDER OF HIS FATHER.