He died in 1748, at the age of seventy-four, in ripe years, and hoary with the honours of holiness. We are dependent upon his friend and biographer, Dr. Gibbons, for almost all that we know of his last days and hours, but it is very pleasant to find that the author of “The World to Come” himself went down to the grave with all the calmness and confidence which the words he has uttered have so often imparted to others in the outlook towards the better country. He says, “It is a glory to the Gospel when we can lie down with courage in hope of its promised blessings; dying with faith and fortitude is a noble conclusion of a life of zeal and service.” “Death in the course of nature,” he says, “as well as by the hands of violence, hath always something awful and formidable in it; flesh and blood shrink and tremble at the appearance of a dissolution; but death is the last enemy of all the saints, and when a Christian meets it with sacred courage he gives that honour to the Captain of his salvation which the saints in glory can never give, and which we can never repeat; it is an honour to our common faith when it overcomes the terrors of death, and raises the Christian to a song of triumph in the view of the last enemy; it is a new crown put upon the head of our Redeemer, and a living cordial put into the hands of mourning friends in our dying hour when we can take leave of them with holy fortitude, rejoicing in the salvation of Christ.”

Such were his words; such honour have not all the saints; some who have looked forward through life with triumph to that hour have fainted when it came, and some who feared it most have felt it least: peculiar temperaments and special forms of pain and disease sometimes make death dreadful; and an old writer says, “We are not glad to feel the snake, even when we know its sting is drawn.” Thomas Walsh, one of the holiest and most eminent of the early Methodists, was very angry against John Fletcher, the seraphic vicar of Madeley, because he heard him say that some comparatively weak believers might die most cheerfully, and that some strong ones, for the further purification of their faith, or for inscrutable reasons, might have severe conflicts. “Be it done unto you according to your faith,” said Walsh, “and be it done unto me according to mine.” But when the hour came to Walsh it was clouded, and those eyes which had “looked out of the windows were darkened;” only at the last moment he exclaimed, “He is come! He is come! My beloved is mine, and I am His for ever!” And so he passed. But Fletcher died in a rapture. “I know thy soul,” said his wife, “but if Jesus is very present with thee, lift up thy right hand.” Immediately it was raised. “If the prospects of glory sweetly open before thee, repeat the sign.” The hand was raised a second time, and so his soul breathed itself away. Faith survives the presence of sensible comforts. An aged believer in Southampton, on her death-bed, complained of the absence of sensible comforts to her pastor, the Rev. W. Kingsbury, but so strong was her faith that she said, “It is against the whole scope of Divine revelation that my soul should be lost.” Old Thomas Fuller, having surveyed the various modes of death, arrived at the short, decisive conclusion, “None please me.” “But away,” he adds, “with these thoughts; the mark must not choose what arrow shall be shot against it.” The happiness of a clear, calm departure was given to Watts, his closing days were serene and happy; with all the imaginative glow of his mind, he had naturally a calm character. He had well grounded his convictions; he had long lived like a sunbeam amidst sunbeams in the light. Dr. Gibbons, speaking from his own knowledge, says, “Although his weakness was very great, he knew no decay of intelligence, and was the subject of no wild fancies.” His biographer adds, “He saw his approaching dissolution with a mind perfectly calm and composed, without the least alarm or dismay, and I never could discover, though I was frequently with him, the least shadow of a doubt as to his future everlasting happiness, or anything that looked like an unwillingness to die; how I have known him recite with self-application those words in Hebrews, ‘Ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye may receive the promise;’ and how often have I heard him, upon leaving the family after supper and withdrawing to rest, 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.”

His dying sayings are recorded, and they were all of them of a quiet and peaceful nature. Dr. Jennings, who preached his funeral sermon, and saw him on his death-bed, mentions, that while for two or three years previous to his death his active and more sprightly powers of nature had failed, his trust in God, through Jesus the Mediator, remained unshaken to the last. To Lady Abney he said: “I bless God I can lie down with comfort at night, not being solicitous whether I awake in this world or another.” And again he said: “I should be glad to read more, yet not in order to be confirmed more in the truth of the Christian religion, or in the truth of its promises, for I believe them enough to venture into eternity on them.” When he was almost worn out and broken down by his infirmities he said, in conversation with a friend, that he remembered an aged minister used to say, that the most learned and knowing Christians, when they come to die, have only the same plain promises of the Gospel for their support as the common and the unlearned. “And so,” said he, “I find it; they are the plain promises of the Gospel that are my support, and I bless God they are plain promises, which do not require much labour or pains to understand them, for I can do nothing now but look into my Bible for some promise to support me, and live upon that.” Dr. Gibbons naturally regrets that he did not commit to writing the words of his dying friend; it is wonderful that he did not; but Watts had an amanuensis who had been with him upwards of twenty years, and who, as Gibbons says, was “in a manner ever with him;” to him and to Miss Abney, or, as she is generally called, Mistress Elizabeth Abney, the eldest daughter and successor to the Abney property, we are principally indebted for the record of his dying words. When he found his spirit tending to impatience, he would check himself, saying: “The business of a Christian is to bear the will of God as well as do it. If I were in health I could only be doing that, and that I may do now; the best thing in obedience is a regard to the will of God, and the way to that is to get our inclinations and aversions as much modified as we can.” Some of his expressions were such as the following: “I would be waiting to see what God will do with me; it is good to say as Mr. Baxter, what, when, and where God pleases. If God should raise me up again I may finish some more of my papers, or God can make use of me to save a soul, and that will be worth living for. If God has no more service for me to do, through grace I am ready; it is a great mercy to me that I have no manner of fear or dread of death. I could if God please lay my head back and die without terror this afternoon or night; my chief supports are from my view of eternal things, and the interest I have in them. I trust all my sins are pardoned through the blood of Christ; I have no fear of dying; it would be my greatest comfort to lie down and sleep, and wake no more.” Dr. Gibbons a short time before his death came into his room, and finding him alone sat down for conversation with him; he said not a word of what he had been or done in life, but his soul seemed swallowed up with gratitude and joy for the redemption of sinners by Jesus Christ. His visitor thought he realized the description of the apostle, “Whom having not seen ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

So he continued to the close, rising into no ecstasies, nor sinking into any great depressions, in the full possession of his understanding, free from pain of body, comfortable in spirit. This was during the autumn of 1748. It was during the month of November that he was confined to his room, never to leave it any more. For three weeks he continued in the state just described, tenderly attended for the most part by Lady Abney or Mr. Parker. The following extracts are from Mr. Parker’s letters to the brother of Dr. Watts, residing at Southampton, the first dated November 24th, 1748: “I wrote to you by the last post that we apprehended my master very near his end, and that we thought it not possible he should be alive when the letter reached your hands; and it will no doubt greatly surprise you to hear that he still lives. We ourselves are amazed at it. He passed through the last night in the main quiet and easy, but for five hours would receive nothing within his lips. I was down in his chamber early in the morning, and found him quite sensible. I begged he would be pleased to take a little liquid to moisten his mouth, and he received at my hand three teaspoonsful, and has done the like several times this day. Upon inquiry he told me he lay easy, and his mind was peaceful and serene. I said to him this morning that he had taught us how to live, and was now teaching us how to die by his patience and composure, for he has been remarkably in this frame for several days past. He replied, ‘Yes.’ I told him I hoped he experienced the comfort of these words, ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.’ He answered, ‘I do.’ The ease of body and calmness of mind which he enjoys is a great mercy to him, and to us. His sick chamber has nothing terrifying in it. He is an upright man, and I doubt not that his end will be peace. We are ready to use the words of Job, and say, ‘We shall seek him in the morning, but he shall not be.’ But God only knows by whose power he is upheld in life, and for wise purposes, no doubt. He told me he liked that I should be with him. All other business is put off, and I am in the house night and day. I would administer all the relief that is in my power. He is worthy of all that can be done for him. I am your very faithful and truly afflicted servant.”

On the next day, November 25th, in the afternoon, aged seventy-four years, four months, and eight days, the gentle spirit of the Doctor passed away, and Mr. Parker wrote again to the same person: “At length the fatal news is come. The spirit of the good man, my dear master, took its flight from the body to worlds unseen and joys unknown yesterday in the afternoon, without a struggle or a groan. My Lady Abney and Mrs. Abney are supported as well as we can reasonably expect. It is a house of mourning and tears, for I have told you before now that we all attended upon him and served him from a principle of love and esteem. May God forgive us all, that we have improved no more by him, while we enjoyed him!” “May I be excused,” says his biographer, “if I take the liberty of adding that I saw the corpse of this excellent man in his coffin, and observed nothing more than death in its aspect. The countenance appeared quite placid, like a person fallen into a gentle sleep, or such as the spirit might be supposed to leave behind it upon its willing departure to the celestial happiness. How justly might I have said at the moment I beheld his dead earth, as he does in an epitaph upon a pious young man, who was removed from our world after a lingering and painful illness:

And this was the manner in which “this silver cord was loosed, and this golden bowl broken.”

They buried him, of course, in Bunhill Fields; thither already had been borne the bodies of many of those who had been his fellow-students, and his most familiar friends; and thither were to follow him at last many of those friends who were for a few brief years to survive him. It was the Campo Santo of Nonconformity, the spot consecrated by the memories of the martyrs and confessors of civil and religious liberty, and their tombs then were fresh. Their graves and their memories were green and verdant. Amidst the wilderness of indiscriminate tombs it is now scarcely possible to decipher localities, dust has mingled with dust, yet it would be scarcely possible to visit anywhere a spot where almost every mound recalled venerable remains or in the course of years became haunted by such tender and animating memories. Bunhill Fields does not possess the attractive and splendid tombs of Père la Chaise or Munich, of Greenwood or Kensall Green, but it may be with perfect certainty affirmed that none of these places possess such a congregation of sainted sleepers, and such consecrated dust.

The history of this pensive enclosure goes back to the reign of Henry III. It had been from a period even anterior to this set apart as the exercising and training ground for the archers and train-bands of the City; indeed it is probable, whether he knew it or not, that this is the very spot to which Lord Lytton refers in some of the earlier scenes of the “Last of the Barons,” the archery-ground of Finsbury; a romantic and lovely spot, a very easy walk from the quaint gabled houses of the old City four hundred years since. It was a spot surrounded by gardens and orchards in the Manor of Finsbury or Fensbury, and on the borders of that extensive suburban tract, the Moor Fields; but when the Great Plague decimated London, the Corporation set apart this field as a burial-place for the poor. It was a gentle acclivity, a rising spot of ground, which, affection had called the Bonhill, at a time when the language of the country was very largely held in possession by Norman influences and French terms, as in innumerable instances mingled with Saxon. Thus:

The subsequent history of the place justifies another characterization from the same poet:

As a humble cemetery for the purposes we have mentioned, it had been enclosed at the charge of the Corporation, but for this purpose it was not long needed; and when the ravages of persecution succeeded to those of disease, one Tyndall purchased it, principally for the interment of Dissenters, and it became known as Tyndall’s Burying Ground. The first interment in this second epoch of its funereal history dates from the first distinctly legible stone in the year 1668. Twenty years after this, it received the beloved and revered remains of John Bunyan; in the interim, many of those who had been among the foremost religious actors, preachers, and writers of the time came hither—Thomas Goodwin, Thomas Manton, Joseph Caryl, Theophilus Gale, John Owen, William Jenkyn, Henry Jessey, William Kiffin, Hanserd Knollys, and many others. In this spot almost every order of religious outlawed opinion finds some representative: here reposes the active body of Daniel Defoe, and in Bunhill Fields, but in a spot set apart to those of his opinion, rests the founder of the Society of Friends, George Fox; and here that revered and holy woman, from whose household in the Rectory of Epworth went forth the inspiration, as from her own life went forth the lives of the prophet and poet of Methodism, Mrs. Susannah Wesley; here rest two well-beloved sweet singers, whose names are found in all our hymn-books, Joseph Swain and Joseph Hart. As the years passed along every one brought some additional revenue to the wealth of the spot. Hither came Dr. Gibbons, Watts’ biographer, and, by-and-by, John Gill, the author of the huge commentary, if wild in fancy, still learned in all Rabbinical and Hebrew lore, and John Macgowan, the author of the “Dialogues of Devils;” here rests Dr. Williams, the founder of the well-known library, and donor of the scholarships connected with it, and by this name we are reminded of the great Arians who sleep very quietly here. Here lie Theophilus Lindsay, Abraham Bees, Richard Price, Nathaniel Gardner, and Thomas Belsham, all men of huge scholarship, whatever our estimate of their doctrines; here lies, of another order, the learned John Eames, the friend and fellow-student of Dr. Watts, the friend and correspondent of Sir Isaac Newton, and of whom Watts said that he was the most learned man he ever knew; Thomas Bradbury, Watts’ abusive and disingenuous traducer and adversary, found the quiet he never permitted himself to find when living, either in tranquil or troublesome times; and hither, within the memory of those living, came Matthew Wilks, quaint and witty old preacher of the London Tabernacles, and his fiery-hearted and earnest co-pastor, John Hyatt, and James Upton, John Rippon, and the beloved and beautiful Alexander Waugh and George Burder. The names we have mentioned are great, but a very small instalment from the list of those famous in holiness and scholarship and sanctified genius, to whom Bunhill Fields was the Machpelah of their lives. Indeed, until the opening of the Abney Park Cemetery, a place which derived its name and interest from its association with, and memories of, Dr. Watts, Bunhill Fields was the receptacle of every Nonconformist notability in the neighbourhood of London. It was as natural that those who had attained an eminence in its confession should receive sepulture there, as that the great statesman or poet should repose within the hallowed naves of Westminster. The significance of the spot, and the fact that it received amongst its other treasures all that was mortal of the subject of this memoir, seem to justify this lengthy loitering amongst its tombs.

Watts, by his will, directed that his remains should find their last resting-home in this place, amongst the fathers and brethren, many of whom he had so well known; he also desired that it should be conducted as quietly as possible, but wished that his body should be attended to the grave by two Independent, two Presbyterian, and two Baptist ministers; but an immense concourse of persons gathered, as was to be expected. Dr. Chandler gave the address at the grave, and Dr. David Jennings preached to his people the funeral sermon. Returning from the funeral, Dr. Benjamin Grosvenor was met by a friend, who said, “Well, Doctor, you have seen the end of Dr. Watts, and must soon follow him; what think you of death?” “Think of it!” replied he, “why, when death comes I shall smile on him if God smile on me.” Other funeral sermons were preached, and they are in our possession, especially one by Dr. John Milner, of which Doddridge thought very highly, and in whose house Oliver Goldsmith, a poor, simple young man, his mind and heart full of worlds of shrewdness and tenderness, for a long time lived as an usher. To prevent any laboured and too flattering an epitaph, which in those days, indeed, there was plenty of cause to dread, from the hands of partial friends, who certainly had none of the graces of concision, Watts wrote his own modest memorial, and it was placed over his grave. It reads as follows:

But, shortly after his death, a monument was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey. Another monument erected in his chapel met with a singular fate: some years since the chapel was pulled down, and all its properties sold off. John Astley Marsden, Esq., of Liscard Castle, in Cheshire, passing through one of the London streets, saw a marble tablet inscribed with the name of Dr. Watts; inquiring about its meaning, he found it was the very tablet which had been set up behind his pulpit; he purchased it as an interesting relic of a man for whom he had a great reverence, he took it home to his residence in Cheshire, and upon his own ground he reared a church at his own expense, and there placed the old cast-aside monument, handing the church over in trust to the Congregational body. The inscription is that humble memorial which Watts himself had prepared, and to which we have referred. In addition, however, to these, a monument has been raised to his memory in Abney Park Cemetery, a cemetery which has succeeded to the reputation of Bunhill Fields as the resting-place of metropolitan Nonconformists, and is spread out upon the grounds where stood the house and park, the history of which, and its relation to the memory of Watts, we have given in an earlier part of this volume.

In 1861, principally through the active exertions of Mr. William Lankester, a monument was erected to his memory in his native town of Southampton. The statue, about eight feet high, which is three feet larger than life, is of white marble, and stands upon a pedestal of polished grey Aberdeen granite; and the site selected has received since then the designation “Watts’ Park.” The movement for the erection of the monument received the co-operation of Churchmen as well as Nonconformists, and the president of the committee was Dr. Wigram, the Bishop of Rochester. The statue was uncovered by the Earl of Shaftesbury, July 17th, 1861, and the day was kept with great festivity in the town;[46] it took the shape of a great local celebration in honour of a man who had conferred honour on the town by his life and writings. It is not uninteresting to think of the change of public sentiment since the day when the infant Isaac, in the arms of his mother, was held up to the eyes of his father in the gaol of the very town where, to the honoured memory of that infant, there was offered up so large an ovation of respect, in which not only the Mayor and Corporation, but members, ministers, and prelates of that very Church which had persecuted the father for his opinions, united. It is a testimony to the change which has passed over ecclesiastical opinion since that day.

Thus, some portion of the prophecy of Dr. Jennings in his funeral sermon, from the text, “He being dead yet speaketh,” was fulfilled. “If I am not greatly deceived, the same thing will be said of him in far distant ages that is said of Abel in our text; while he is now celebrating the honours of God and of the Lamb in the new songs of heaven, how many thousands of pious worshippers are this day lifting up their hearts to God in the sacred songs that he taught them upon earth! Though his voice is not any longer heard by us, yet his words, like those of the day and night, are gone out to the end of the world. America and Europe still hear him speak, and it is highly probable they may continue to do so till Europe and America shall be no more.”