Conscience is a busy power within the breast of the most desperate, and when roused by the prospect of death and judgment, it speaks in terrible tones. The notorious Muller denied the murder of Mr. Briggs, until, with cap on his face and the rope round his neck, he submitted to the final appeal and acknowledged, as he launched into eternity, 'Yes, I have done it.' But the cries of these persons seem to have arisen, not from an abhorrence of sin, but from a dread of punishment; they feared hell, and hence they wished for heaven; they desired to be saved from the consequences of sin, but were not delivered from the love of it. Need we wonder that our friend had but little faith in a sick-bed repentance? Scripture and reason alike warn us against trusting to such repentance, 'Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.' While our friend felt that he would have been unworthy the name of a Christian had he not felt more for the spiritual than for the temporal woes of his fellow creatures, yet the latter were not forgotten by him; and it sometimes grieved him that he could not more largely minister to the temporal wants of the poor, the fatherless, the orphans, and the widows, whom he visited. [Sidenote: HIS SELF-DENIAL.] And perhaps one of the most painful trials a visitor of the sick endures is, to go moneyless to a chamber that has been crossed by want, and whose inmate is utterly unable to supply his own necessities; but when the visitor can relieve the physical as well as the spiritual necessities of the sufferer, with what a buoyant step and cheerful heart he enters the abode of poverty and suffering! And his words, instead of falling like icicles on the sufferer's soul, fall on it as refreshing as a summer rain, warm as the tempered ray, and welcome as a mother's love. Such a visitor has often chased despair from the abode of wretchedness, and filled it with the atmosphere of hope. [Sidenote: GIVES UP TOBACCO.]