declare with the sweetest composure, that if his Master was to say to him that he had no more work for him to do, he should be glad to be dismissed that night. And I once heard him say, with a kind of impatience, perhaps such as might in some degree trespass upon that submission we ought always to pay to the Divine will, ‘I wonder why the great God should continue me in life, when I am incapable of performing Him any further service?’” The death-beds of great and eminent men are often hung round with curious fables and inventions; one is mentioned even to our own day, although Dr. Gibbons denies the whole story in the very first edition of his biography. Somebody conveyed it to Mr. Toplady, who says, “That little more than half-an-hour before Dr. Watts expired he was visited by his dear friend, Mr. Whitefield; he, asking him how he found himself, the dying doctor answered, ‘Here am I, one of Christ’s waiting servants.’ Soon after a medicine was brought in, and Mr. Whitefield assisted in raising him upon the bed that he might with more convenience take the draught; on the doctor’s apologizing for the trouble he gave Mr. Whitefield, the latter replied, with his usual amiable politeness, ‘Surely, my dear brother, I am not too good to wait upon a waiting servant of Christ!’ Soon after, Mr. Whitefield took his leave, and often regretted since that he had not prolonged his visit, which he would certainly have done could he have foreseen that his friend was but within a half-an-hour’s distance from the kingdom of glory.” There is not a word of truth in the whole story; Dr. Gibbons says it is entirely fictitious. “Mr. Whitefield never visited the doctor in his last illness or confinement, nor had any conversation or interview with him for some months before his decease. It were to be wished that greater care was practised by the writers of other persons’ lives, that illusions might not take place and obtain the regards of truth, and lay historians who come after them under the unpleasing necessity of dissolving their figments, and thereby, in consequence, evincing to the world how little credit is due to these relations.”