That he sometimes thought of the subject of religion, indeed, is
evident, if we believe a conversation which Count Monthoton, one of his
attendants, has recorded. "Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself,"
Napoleon is represented to have said, "founded empires upon force! Jesus
Christ alone founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of
men would die for Him. I die before my time, and my body will be given
back to the earth to become food for worms. Such is the fate which so
soon awaits him who has been called the Great Napoleon! what a
difference between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ,
which is proclaimed, loved, and adored, and which is extending over the
whole earth. Call you this dying? Is it not living rather? The death of
Christ is the death of a God!" Napoleon became every day more and more
unhappy. He used to feed some fish in a pond, but they sickened and
died. "Everything that I love," said he, "leaves me: everything that
belongs to me is stricken!"
At last the event came which released him from all his earthly sorrows.
A painful disease, called cancer in the stomach, attacked him; and,
after considerable suffering, he expired on the 5th of May, 1821. The
night of his dissolution was a terrible one; a fearful storm was raging
all around. Napoleon had, for some hours, been insensible; towards six
o'clock in the evening, however, he pronounced the words, "Head of the
Army," as if his thoughts were running on the field of battle, and
immediately afterwards his immortal spirit quitted the tabernacle of
clay in which it dwelt. Such was Napoleon's death-bed. Alas! we look in
vain upon it for that language of triumph which has so often broken from
the lips of the followers of Jesus, when passing through the dark
"valley of the shadow of death." With Napoleon's dying moments, contrast
those of an eminent saint of God, Dr. Payson. "I seem to swim in a flood
of glory," said he to some young persons, "which God pours down upon me.
And I know--I know that my happiness is but begun--I cannot doubt that
it will last for ever. My young friends, were I master of the whole
world, what could it do for me like this! Nothing, nothing. Now all this
happiness I trace back to the religion which I have preached, and to the
time when that great change took place in my heart, which, I have often
told you, is necessary to salvation;--and I now tell you again, that
without this change you cannot, no, you cannot see the kingdom of God!"
Napoleon was buried at Longwood, in the Island of St. Helena, under a
large willow tree; but in 1840 his remains, with the consent of the
British Government, were removed to Paris, and buried with grand honors
in that city.
THE PITCAIRN ISLANDERS.
Many islands have at different times risen above the sea, which had for
long years washed over and hidden them. There are two ways in which new
islands are thus born like a fresh creation from God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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