SECOND STEREOTYPE EDITION, CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR

PUBLISHED BY THE

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY,

150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK.

The text of this and other superb works are available on-line from:

The Willison Politics and Philosophy Resource Center

http://willisoncenter.com/

Reprint and digital file October 16, 2003.

Page numbers in the original appear in brackets as such : [ 3 ].

This selection, ( pp 299-313) consists of Dr. Nelson's observances of both infidels and Christians as they entered the death experience, then recovered. Occurring during his time of infidelity, these remarkable events served to aid his eventual rejection of the thinking of Hume, Voltare &c. The William Tennant, Jr. near death experience is mentioned also. ( See our document on at Willisoncenter.com)

We also included a sketch of his life, pp 395-398.

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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, by DAVID NELSON, in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

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The President of Centre College, Kentucky, has well said in reference to this work, that "after all the learned, eloquent, and argumentative treatises which have been published, on different branches of the Christian evidences, something was still needed— something adapted to the peculiar tastes and condition of our community," especially to many vigorous minds of the West, where the author’s life has been chiefly spent, "to excite curiosity, awaken attention, and stimulate inquiry—something which should bring down abstruse argument to the apprehension of men in general, and present striking facts to arrest the attention of the indifferent and the sceptical. Facts drawn from history, science, and observation, are here placed in a strong and often startling light, and there is an earnestness, a personality, a warm lifeblood of reality running through the whole, which gives to the written argument much of the interest and power of an oral address."

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CONTENTS.

CHAPTER LVII.

The influence of religious belief at the time of death: observations

on mans’s departure…………………………………………………………….299

CHAPTER LVIII.

The dying compared with those who think themselves dying,…………………300

CHAPTER LIX.

The subject continued: a revolutionary officer…………………………………..308

CHAPTER LX.

The subject continued: dying fancies……………………………………………311

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PREFACE.

 THE following work is not a compilation of the evidences of Christianity. It was written with the hope of exciting those who need such research, to read many authors on that subject. A book which does not contain a summary of arguments against infidelity, may provoke an appetite to read volumes where those arguments are found. The evidences of Christianity are not fully contained in any half-score of volumes now existing.

The most of those who have written, have aimed at nothing more than an abridgment of this subject, because of its unusual extent. We may present reasons for investigation, and we may persuade others to read, in a shorter space than that which is required to contain a full array of facts in support of revelation. The following pages were written with the design of urging the multitude to become informed concerning the book of books, the Bible. The call for such an attempt—the necessity for it at the present time—we think fairly inferrible from the following facts.

FIRST FACT. It is true, that in almost every congregation there. are some more or less imbued with infidelity, who do not avow it. They are not confirmed sceptics; but Satan's grand effort to prevent their commencing the work of repentance, or seeking the pardon of sin, is made by suggesting unbelieving doubts. The minister who has been long hoping and looking with unceasing anxiety for their conversion to God, never was thus harassed himself, and does not dream of their real condition. Again, there are countless thousands of the youthful and the uninformed, who are thus kept inactive. Temptations of unbelief cripple or prevent their exertions. Books on this subject are found, for the most part, only in libraries, and they are scarce there and, moreover, those found there are not calculated altogether to fit the cases we are now noticing. Those authors aim at cavils the most plausible only, and strike at infidel objections most worthy of answer; whereas the youth thus injured are very often influenced by arguments puerile in the extreme, and so feeble that the better informed would never believe they could be used.

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SECOND FACT. The adversary of souls would not have young professors and possessors of religion grow in grace. To prevent it, he injects into their minds cold, unbelieving cavils, which embarrass and retard their march. They read on the subject authors that are powerful and unanswerable in the truths they present; but they have no effect on the young inquirers, for they are not sufficiently simplified and extended. They are invincible in the view of those who are familiar with chronology and history, but they suit the educated alone. It has been long true with the author of the following pages, that after trying to speak on the subject, he has been addressed by young persons, who have told him that they rejoiced he had noticed a certain infidel quibble—that it had long harassed them—that they knew it was weak and puerile, but had still been annoyed without having heard the proper answer given.

THIRD FACT. Infidelity is now growing and spreading to an extent the blindness of the church does not suspect: pocket volumes of false statements, infidel manuals, painted perversions of history, etc., are spreading profusely; while opposite publications are growing more rare.

There are many thousands more in our land now growing up in the darkest unbelief; than is known or suspected by any except those who once themselves fought in that division of Satan’s army.

FOURTH FACT. Those who read on this subject in the church are few, and Christians are, to a great extent, but poorly qualified to instruct, or to answer the objections of sceptics against their holy religion.

It has a bad influence on the youthful spectator who notices a leader in society, "a grey-headed professor," unable to answer the cavil of an uninformed mocker. It has a bad influence on a youthful inquirer, who applies for assistance against some sophism of infidelity to one of God's people, and does not receive it.

AND MORE. Is not the age of infidelity approaching, along with the time of terrible judgments?

In a great part of Catholic Europe, are not large masses of the population almost total atheists?

In Great Britain, do not multitudes of the people openly renounce God’s holy volume?

Is not our own nation walking down the same track?

CHAPTER LVII.

RELIGIOUS BELIEF AT DEATH.

IT does not seem a matter of moment where I begin in trying to present thoughts which passed through my mind, while asking whether or not the Scriptures were of God. At different times, and under various temperaments of soul, I meditated on many points which made on me a lasting impression. Sometimes they spurred me on to further thought, or to more industrious reading. Sometimes they seemed to declare that God had revealed his wishes to men. Whether or not these considerations will thus affect others, I cannot tell. In the narration it matters not, I repeat again, where I begin. I shall commence by repeating a few of my thoughts on death.

OBSERVATIONS ON MAN’S DEPARTURE.

While attending medical lectures at Philadelphia, I heard from the lady with whom I boarded an account of certain individuals who were dead, to all appearance, during the prevalence of the yellow-fever in that city, and yet recovered. The fact that they saw, or fancied they saw things in the world of spirits, awakened my curiosity.

She told me of one with whom she was acquainted, who was so confident of his discoveries that he had seemingly thought of little else afterwards, and it had then been twenty-four years. These things appeared philosophically strange to me, for the following reasons

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First, those who from bleeding or from any other cause reach a state of syncope, or the ordinary fainting condition, think not at all, or are unable to remember any mental action. When they recover, it appears either that the mind was suspended, or they were unable to recollect its operations. There are those who believe on either side of this question. Some contend for suspension; others deny it, but say we never can recall thoughts formed while the mind is in that state, for reasons not yet understood.

Secondly, those who in approaching death, reach the first state of insensibility and recover from it, are unconscious of any mental activity, and have no thoughts which they can recall.

Thirdly, if this is so, why then should those who had travelled further into the land of death, and had sunk deeper into the condition of bodily inaction, when recovered, by conscious of mental action, and remember thoughts more vivid than ever had flashed across their souls in the health of boyhood, under a vernal sun, and on a plain of flowers?

After this I felt somewhat inclined to watch, when it became my business year after year to stand by the bed of death. That which I saw was not calculated to protract and deepen the slumbers of infidelity, but rather to dispose towards a degree of restlessness, or, at least, to further observation. I knew that the circle of stupor, or insensibility, drawn around life, and through which all either pass or seem to pass who go out of life, was urged by some to prove that the mind could not exist unless it be in connection with organized matter. For the same

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reason, others have contended that our souls must sleep until the morning of the resurrection, when we shall regain our bodies. That which I witnessed for myself pushed me, willing or unwilling, in a different direction. Before I relate these facts, I must offer something which may illustrate to a certain extent the thoughts towards which they pointed.

If we were to stand on the edge of a very deep ditch or gulf, on the distant verge of which a curtain hangs which obstructs the view, we might feel a wish to know what is beyond it, or whether there is any light in that unseen land. Suppose we were to let down a ladder, protracted greatly in its length, and ask a bold adventurer to descend and make discoveries. He goes to the bottom and then returns, telling us that there he could see nothing; that all was total darkness. We might very naturally infer the absence of light there; but if we concluded that his powers of vision had been annihilated, or that there could surely be no light in the land beyond the curtain, because, to reach that land, a very dark ravine must be crossed, it would have been weak reasoning; so much so, that, if it contented us, we must be easily satisfied. It gave me pain to notice many, nay, many physicians, who, on these very premises, or on something equally weak, were quieting them-selves in the deduction that the soul sees no more after death. Suppose this adventurer descends again, and then ascends the other side so near the top that he can reach the curtain and slightly lift it. When he returns, he tells us that his vision had been suspended totally as before; but that he went nearer

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the distant land, and it was revived again—that, as the curtain was lifted, he saw brighter light than he had ever seen before. We would say to him, "For a certain distance vision is suspended; but inaction is not loss of sight. Only travel on further, and you will see again." We can understand that any one might go to the bottom of that ravine a thousand times—he might remain there for days, and, if he went no further, he could tell on his return nothing of the unseen regions.

Something like this was illustrated by the facts noted during many years’ employment in the medical profession. A few cases may be taken as examples.

I was called to see a female who departed under an influence which causes the patient to faint again and again, more and still more profoundly, until life is extinct. For the information of physicians, I mention, it was uterine hemorrhage from inseparably attached placenta. When recovered from the first condition of syncope, she appeared as unconscious, or as destitute of activity of spirit, as others usually do. She sunk again and revived; it was still the same. She fainted more profoundly still; and, when awake again, she appeared as others usually do who have no thoughts which they can recall. At length she appeared entirely gone. It did seem as though the struggle was for ever past. Her weeping relatives clasped their hands and exclaimed, "She is dead !" but, unexpectedly, she waked once more, and glancing her eyes on one who sat near, exclaimed, "Oh, Sarah, I was at an entirely new place" and then sunk to remain insensible to the things of this world.

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Why she, like others in fainting, should have no thoughts which she could recall, when not so near death as she afterwards was when she had thought, I could not clearly explain. Why her greatest activity of mind appeared to happen during her nearest approach to the future world, and while so near that from that stage scarcely any ever return who once reach it, seemed somewhat perplexing to me. I remembered that in the case recorded by Dr. Rush, where the man recovered who was to all appearance entirely dead, his activity of mind was unusual. He thought he heard and saw things unutterable. He did not know whether he was altogether dead or not. St. Paul says he was in a condition so near to death, that he could not tell whether he was out of the body or not; but that he heard things unutterable. I remembered that Tennant of New Jersey, [ William Tennant, Jr. ] and his friends, could not decide whether or not he had been out of the body; but he appeared to be so some days, and thought his discoveries unutterable. The man who cuts his finger and faints, recovering speedily, has no thoughts, or remembers none; he does not approach the distant edge of the ravine. These facts appeared to me poorly calculated to advance the philosophical importance of one who has discovered from sleep, or from syncope, that there is no other existence because this is all which we have seen. They appeared to me rather poorly calculated to promote the tranquillity of one seeking the comforts of atheism. For my own part, I never did desire the consolations of everlasting nothingness; I never could covet a plunge beneath the black wave of eternal

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forgetfulness, and cannot say that these observations in and of themselves gave me pain. But it was evident that thousands of the scientific were influenced by the weight of a small pebble to adopt a creed, provided that creed contradicted holy writ. I had read and heard too much of man’s depravity and of his love for darkness, not to see that it militated against my system of deism, if it should appear that the otherwise learned should neglect to observe, or if observant, should be satisfied with the most superficial view, and seizing some shallow and questionable facts, build hastily upon them a fabric for eternity.

In the cases of those who, recovering from yellow-fever, thought they had enjoyed intercourse with the world of spirits, they were individuals who had appeared to be dead.

The following fact took place in recent days. Similar occurrences impressed me during years of observation. In the city of St. Louis, a female departed who had a rich portion of the comforts of Christianity. It was after some kind of spasm that was strong enough to have been the death struggle, that she said in a whisper, being unable to speak aloud, to her young pastor, "I had a sight of home, and I saw my Saviour."

There were others who, after wading as far as that which seemed to be the middle of the river, and returning, thought they had seen a different world, and that they had had an antepast of hell. But these cases we pass over; and, in the next chapter, look at facts which! point along the same road we have been travelling.

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CHAPTER LVI1I.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

I WAS surprised to find that the condition of mind in the case of those who were dying, and of those who only thought themselves dying, differed very widely. I had supposed that the joy or the grief of death originated from the fancy of the patient, one supposing himself very near to great happiness, and the other expecting speedy suffering. My discoveries seemed to overturn this theory. Why should not the professor of religion who believes himself dying when he really is not, rejoice as readily as when he is departing, if his joy is the offspring of expectation? Why should not the alarm of the scoffer who believes himself dying and is not, be as uniform and as decisive as when he is in the river, if it comes of fancied evil or cowardly terrors? The same questions I asked myself again and again. I have no doubt that there is some strange reason connected with our natural disrelish for truth, which causes so many physicians, after seeing such facts so often, never to observe them. During twenty years of observation, I found the state of the soul belonging to the dying was uniformly and materially unlike that of those who only supposed themselves departing. This is best made plain by noting cases which occurred.

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converted, and his friends, judging from his walk, hoped with him. He was seized with disease, and believed himself within a few paces of the gate of futurity. He felt no joy, his mind was dark and his soul clouded. His exercises were painful, and the opposite of every enjoyment. He was not dying. He recovered. He had not been in the death-stream. After this he was taken again. He believed himself dying, and he was not mistaken. All was peace, serenity, hope, triumph.

2. There was a man who mocked at holy things. He became seriously diseased, and supposed himself sinking into the death-slumber. He was not frightened. His fortitude and composure were his pride, and the boast of his friends. The undaunted firmness with which he could enter futurity was spoken of exultingly. It was a mistake. He was not in the condition of dissolution. His soul never had been on the line between two worlds. After this he was taken ill again. He supposed as before that he was entering the next state, and he really was; but his soul seemed to feel a different atmosphere. The horrors of these scenes have been often described, and are often seen. I need not endeavor to picture such a departure here. The only difficulty in which I was thrown by such cases was, "‘Why was he not thus agonized before, when he thought himself departing? Can it be possible that we can stand so precisely on the dividing line, that the gale from both this and the coming world may blow upon our cheek? Can we have a taste of the exercises of the next territory before we enter it?" When I attempted to account

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for this on the simple ground of bravery and cowardice, I was met by the two following facts.

First, I have known those—the cases are not unfrequent—who were brave, who had stood unflinching in battle’s whirlpool. They had resolved never to disgrace their system of unbelief by a trembling death. They had called to Christians in the tone of resolve, saying, "I can die as coolly as you can." I had seen those die from whom entire firmness might fairly be expected. I had heard groans, even if the teeth were clenched for fear of complaint, such as I never wish to hear again; and I had looked into countenances, such as I hope never to see again.

Again, I had seen cowards die. I had seen those depart who were naturally timid, who expected themselves to meet death with fright and alarm. I had heard such, as it were, sing before Jordan was half forded. I had seen faces where, palled as they were, I beheld more celestial triumph than I had ever witnessed anywhere else. In that voice there was a sweetness, and in that eye there was a glory, which I never could have fancied in the death-spasms, if I had not been near.

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CHAPTER LIX.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

THE condition of the soul, when the death-stream is entered, is not the same with that which it often becomes when it is almost passed. The brave man who steps upon the ladder across the dark ravine, with eye undaunted and haughty spirit, changes fearfully, in many cases, when he comes near enough to the curtain to lift it. The Christian who goes down the ladder pale and disconsolate, oftentimes starts with exultation and tries to burst into a song when almost across.

ILLUSTRATION. A revolutionary officer, wounded at the battle of Germantown, was praised for his patriotism. The war ended, but he continued still to fight, in a different way, under the banner of one whom he called the Captain of his salvation. The applause of man never made him too proud to talk of the Man of Calvary. The hurry of life’s driving pursuits could not consume all his time, or make him forget to kneel by the side of his consort, in the circle of his children, and anticipate a happy meeting in a more quiet clime.

To abbreviate this history, his life was such that those who knew him believed, if any one ever did die happily, this man would be one of that class. I saw him when the time arrived. He said to those around him, "I am not as happy as I could wish, or as I had

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expected. I cannot say that I distrust my Saviour, for I know in whom I have believed; but I have not that pleasing readiness to depart which I had looked for." This distressed his relatives beyond expression. His friends were greatly pained, for they had looked for triumph. His departure was very slow, and still his language was, "I have no exhilaration or delightful readiness in my travel." The weeping circle pressed around him. Another hour passed. His hands and his feet became entirely cold. The feeling of heart remained the same. Another hour passes, and his vision has grown dim, but the state of his soul is unchanged. His daughter seemed as though her body could not sustain her anguish of spirit, if her father should cross the valley before the cloud passed from his sun. Before his hearing vanished, she made an agreement with him that at any stage as he travelled on, if he had a discovery of advancing glory, or a foretaste of heavenly delight, he should give her a certain token with his hand; his hands he could still move, cold as they were. She sat holding his hand hour after hour. In addition to his sight, his hearing at length failed. After a time he appeared almost unconscious of any thing, and the obstructed breathing peculiar to death was advanced near its termination, when he gave tile token to his pale, but now joyous daughter; and the expressive flash of exultation was seen to spread itself through the stiffening muscles of his face. When his child asked him to give a signal if he had any happy view of heavenly light, with the feelings and opinions I once owned I could have asked, "Do you suppose that the increase of the

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death-chill will add to his happiness? Are you to expect, that as his eyesight leaves, and as his hearing becomes confused, and his breathing convulsed, and as he sinks into that cold, fainting, sickening condition of pallid death, his exultation is to commence

It did then commence. Then is the time when many who enter the dark valley cheerless, begin to see something that transports; but some are too low to tell of it, and their friends think they departed under a cloud, when they really did not. It is at this stage of the journey that the enemy of God, who started with look of defiance and words of pride, seems to meet with that which alters his views and expectations; but he cannot tell it, for his tongue can no longer move.

Those who inquire after and read the death of the wife of the celebrated John Newton, will find a very plain and very interesting instance where the Saviour seemed to meet with a smiling countenance his dying servant, when she had advanced too far to call back to her sorrowful friends, and tell them of the pleasing news.

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CHAPTER LX.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

My attention was awakened very much by observing the dying fancies of the servants of this world, differing with such characteristic singularity from the fancies of the departing Christian. It is no uncommon thing for those who die to believe they see, or hear, or feel that which appears only fancy to by-standers. Their friends believe that it is the overturning of their intellect. I am not about to enter into the discussion of the question, whether it is or is not always fancy. Some attribute it to more than fancy; but inasmuch as in many instances the mind is deranged while its habitation is falling into ruins, and inasmuch as it is the common belief that it is only imagination of which I am writing, we will look at it under the name of fancy.

The fanciful views of the dying servants of sin, and the devoted friends of Christ, were strangely different as far as my observation extended. One who had been an entire sensualist and a mocker at religion, while dying, appeared in his senses in all but one thing. "Take that black man from the room," said he. He was answered that there was none in the room. He replied, "There he is, standing near the window. His presence is very irksome to me, take him out." After a time, again and again his

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call was, "Will no one remove him? There he is; surely some one will take him away."

I was mentioning to another physician my surprise that he should have been so much distressed even if there had been many blacks in the room, for he had been waited on by them day and night for many years; and also my wonder that the mind had not been diseased in some other respect, when he told me the names of two others, his patients, men of similar lives, who were tormented with the same fancy, and in the same way, while dying.

A young female who called the Man of Calvary her greatest friend, was, when dying, in her senses in all but one particular. "Mother," she would say, pointing in a certain direction, " do you see those beautiful creatures ?" Her mother would answer, "No, there is no one there, my dear." She would reply, "Well, that is strange. I never saw such countenances and such attire. My eye never rested on any thing so lovely." Oh, says one, this is all imagination, and the notions of a mind collapsing; wherefore tell of it? My answer is, that I am not about to dispute, or to deny that it is fancy; but the fancies differ in features and in texture. Some in their derangement call out, " Catch me, I am sinking; hold me, I am falling ;" others say, "Do you hear that music? Oh, were ever notes so celestial !" This kind of notes, and these classes of fancies belonged to different classes of individuals, and who they were, was the item which attracted my wonder. Such things are noticed by few, and remembered by almost none; but I am inclined to believe, that if

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notes were kept of such cases, volumes of interest might be formed.

My last remark here, reader, is, that we necessarily speak somewhat in the dark of such matters, but you and I will know more shortly. Both of us will see and feel for ourselves where we cannot be mistaken, in the course of a very few months, or years.

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The author of this striking work, which has been blessed in bringing scores of infidels to Christ, and of which not far from 100,000 copies have been circulated, was eminent as an intelligent infidel [ Deistical, Willison ed. ] physician, and then as an able minister of Christ. He loved much, for he had much forgiven.

He was born September 24, 1793, near Jonesborough, East Tennessee; and died at Quincy, Illinois, October 17, 1844, aged 51. His parents were from Virginia, his father an officer of the church, and his mother, who was of Scotch descent, eminently pious: In childhood and youth he was sedate and contemplative, his mind seeming to receive an impression from the lofty and romantic scenery around the Nolachucky, near the banks of which he was reared. At twelve he thought himself converted, and soon entered Washington College, near his father’s residence, at which he graduated at sixteen, when he proceeded to Danville, Kentucky, where his elder brother was then settled in the ministry, and entered on the study of medicine with the celebrated Dr. Ephraim McDowell.

At nineteen, just as he was entering on the practice of medicine, he joined himself as surgeon to a Kentucky regiment then proceeding to Canada in the war with Great Britain, where he suffered every privation. In one march, in the severe cold and deep snows of a wild Indian territory, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, he suffered himself to he left unobserved, and resolved there to lie down and die. But his friend and cousin, the brave

[ 396 ] Col. Allen, who afterwards fell at Tippecanoe, missed him, went back, roused him from his deathlike slumber, took him on his powerful horse, and thus saved him for the work God had appointed him to do. Returning from his northern campaign, he entered on the practice of medicine in Jonesborough; but at the call of Generals Jackson and Coffee, he enlisted again as surgeon of a regiment for the South, and in the wilds of Alabama flooded with rain was seized by fever, reduced to the utmost extremity, but raised up, and at Mobile on the eve of an expected battle, received the news of peace.

He returned to Jonesborough, resumed his profession, at twenty-two married a daughter of David Deaderick, to whom allusion is made in his work as a highly respected infidel merchant of Tennessee, and became eminent as a physician, his practice extending into neighboring counties, and bringing him an income of some $3,000 a year, which he at length relinquished that he might win souls to Christ in the ministry.

In the pursuit of medical science, while infidelity swayed the higher circles, and the works of Volney, Voltaire, and Paine were in high repute, Dr. Nelson—like many who in early life obtained a false hope of their conversion—was led to believe that he had been self-deceived, and that all religion, and the Bible itself was a .delusion. He became an honest unreflecting deist, in which scepticism he was but confirmed by his connection with the army and his subsequent relations in life.

The wonderful processes of his mind in giving up this infidelity, by reluctantly detecting the dishonesty and unfairness of Voltaire and other infidel writers, and by a patient, intelligent examination of the whole subject in his own heart, in the lives and conduct of believers and unbelievers, in practical writings, and especially in the word of God, form perhaps the most interesting portion of his now celebrated work. It is hard for any reader to question his sincerity, the stern integrity, patience, and thoroughness o his investigation, or doubt that he was led by the Holy Spirit, in the true and right way.

At the age of twenty-five he joined the Presbyterian church, of which his father was an elder, deploring his long rejection of the Saviour he now delighted to honor, and resolving to redeem.

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the time by the unreserved consecration of all his powers to him. At first his diffidence scarcely allowed him to lead others in prayer; but his inventive mind, warm heart, and ceaseless energy found many means of usefulness, including the wide circulation of good books while in his extensive medical practice. It is stated that a sermon he heard from the lamented Dr. Cornelius, who passed through Tennessee, fired his mind with the most enlarged missionary spirit, which expired only with his life.

At about the age of thirty-three he gave himself publicly to the ministry of reconciliation, assisted for a time in editing a religious periodical, and was soon installed in Danville, Kentucky, where he had imbibed his infidelity, as successor of his worthy deceased brother, who had done- so much for the church and college there. He soon proved that he had indeed been called to the work of the ministry. He became "a burning and a shining light," not only to his own congregation, but far and wide throughout the state, where the rich effusions of the Spirit abundantly attended his labors; and it was those revivals which were the manifest precursors of the great revival of 1831 which extended throughout the land, and added to the churches more than one hundred thousand souls. He seemed to imbibe, in measure, the whole spirit of our Lord. In personal efforts for the salvation of individuals, he labored like Harlan Page. In the pulpit, his tall, manly form and kindled eye, his frankness and generosity of spirit, the gushing love of his heart for souls, his bold, free, original eloquence, his powerful appeals to the heart and conscience, his full and clear exhibition of Christ and his salvation attracted and fixed the attention of his hearers. And his missionary spirit was large as the world. Especially was his attention directed to the moral wastes, and the training of pious young men, who were then brought into the church in such numbers, for the ministry and missionary work at home and abroad.

It was this spirit that led him to plan and lay the foundation of Marion College in Missouri, for which he visited our Eastern cities, where his fervent appeals at once for money and for the salvation of his hearers endeared him to tens of thousands. Unexpected events thwarting his expectations in Missouri, he

transferred his efforts to forming a somewhat similar establishment at Quincy, Illinois, freely to educate young men as ministers and missionaries. But in the midst of these exhausting efforts, in which he expended all his personal means, he was attacked with epilepsy or paralysis, which gradually unfitted him for labor, and terminated his life at the age of 51.

He wrote the Cause and Cure of Infidelity about 1836, in the first summer of his residence in Illinois, chiefly under the shade of four large oaks, drawing mainly from the resources of his own mind and memory. He also wrote another treatise entitled "Wealth and Honor," breathing a missionary spirit as expansive as the ruins of the fall, summoning the whole energies of the church of God for the world’s redemption, and showing that her wealth and her honor were in rescuing lost souls, and adding them as gems to the Redeemer’s crown. He carried this work to the East for publication, but it is now supposed to be irrecoverably lost.

In his declining health, and often in severe suffering, he mourned mainly that he could not preach the gospel and labor to win sinners to Christ; but he murmured not against the divine will. When the hour of his departure drew nigh, he called to him his wife and so many of his eleven children as were near, saying, "My Master calls. I am going home. Kiss me, my children, and take your last farewell, for I shall soon be in a state of insensibility, and shall not know you." He expressed his wishes in various respects, and then said, "It is well," and slumbered till the resurrection-morn.

His body rests in the cemetery at Woodland, near Quincy, Illinois, where a neat monument bears the following inscription:

"Rev. David Nelson, M. D., author of the Cause and Cure of Infidelity, born in East Tennessee, September 24, 1793—a surgeon in the United States army—a distinguished physician in his native state—a devoted minister of Christ in Danville, Kentucky—a messenger of grace to multitudes—a founder of institutions of learning. Died October 17, 1844, aged 51.

"Erected by friends in New York."