Nevertheless I think it possible, that during the last year or two of his life, when failing mentally as well as bodily, and when labouring under the excitement or subsequent depression caused by the opium he ate to banish pain, he may have said, or written recklessly, words which are capable of being twisted into meaning a change of views. There can be little doubt that the taking of narcotics deadens the moral sense, the appreciation of Truth, and possibly, towards the end, Mr. Hawker may have had hankerings Romeward. But we must consider the man as he was when sound in body and in mind, and not when stupified by pain, and the medicines given to deaden the pain.[48] I have laboured, above all things, in this book, to give a true picture of the man I describe: I have not painted an ideal portrait. And now my work is done. I have written truthfully the life of this most remarkable man: I have taken care to “nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice.” I cannot more worthily conclude my task than with the peroration of Mr. Hawker’s visitation sermon, already quoted. ‘The day is far spent, and the night is at hand: the hour cometh wherein no man can work. A little while, and all will be over.’ ‘Their love and their hatred, and their envy, will have perished; neither will they any longer have a name under the sun.’ The thousand thoughts that thrill our souls this day, with the usual interests and the common sympathies of an earthly existence—of all these there will not, by-and-by, survive in the flesh a single throb. This, our beloved father in the Church, will have entered into the joy of his Lord, to prefer, perchance, in another region, affectionate supplications for us who survive and remain. We, who are found worthy, shall be gathered to a place and people where the strifes and the controversies of earth are unnoted and unknown. “Violence shall no more be heard in that land, wasting nor destruction within its borders; but they shall call the gates Salvation and the walls Praise. There the envy of Ephraim shall depart and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.”