And it was even so. He was taken very ill during the night; the next day he was worse, the next day worse still, and then medical assistance was called in. But on the Thursday, he got up, and walked for some time in the garden. It seems doubtful whether he thought that his end was so near, although he had a dream, in one of the early evenings in the week, in which he seemed to come up to a great river, which he did not then cross, so that he scarcely thought his work or life might be over even yet.
But on Thursday night he was worse again, and on Friday morning, at two o’clock, he said to his friends, Mr. Davies, Mr. Hughes, and others round his bed, “I am leaving you. I have laboured in the sanctuary fifty-three years, and this is my comfort, that I have never laboured without blood in the basin,”—the ruling power of imagination strong in him to the close, evidently meaning that he had never failed to preach Christ and Him crucified. A few more remarks of the same character: “Preach Christ to the people, brethren. Look at me: in myself I am nothing but ruin, but in Christ I am heaven, and salvation.” He repeated a verse from a favourite Welsh hymn, and then, as if he had done with earth, he waved his hand, and exclaimed, “GOOD-BYE! DRIVE ON!”
It seems another instance of the labour of life pervading by its master-idea the hour of death. For how many years the “one-eyed man” of Anglesea had gone to, and fro on his humble nag! As we have seen, lately his friends had given him a gig, that he might be more at ease in his Master’s service; still he had his old horse, companion of his many journeys. While he was dying, the old mountain days of travel came over his memory—“GOOD-BYE!” said he. “DRIVE ON!” He turned over, and seemed to sleep. He slept indeed. His friends tried to rouse him, but the angelic postman had obeyed the order,—the chariot had passed over the everlasting hills. So he died, July 19th, 1838, in the seventy-third year of his age, and fifty-fourth of his ministry.
His funeral took place four days after his death, in the burying-ground attached to the Welsh Baptist Chapel, in Swansea. It is said there never was such a funeral in Swansea, such a concourse, and crowd of mourners, weeping their way to the grave, and following, as it had been their father. Fountains of sorrow were everywhere unsealed throughout the Principality, in Anglesea especially, where he had passed the greater portion of his life; indeed, throughout the Principality, there was scarcely a pulpit, of the order to which he belonged, which was not draped in black; and it was evident that all felt “a prince and a great man had fallen in Israel.”