almost in an instant take the turn of death: — in a word, figure yourselves in any possible stage or station of life, and with difficulty can you number those who have been surprised in a similar situation; and what right have you to expect, that you alone shall be exempted from a lot common to all? You allow, you confess this; but these confessions are merely words of course, and are never followed by a single precaution to secure you from the danger.
Secondly. Did this uncertainty turn only on the hour, the place, or the manner of your death, it would appear less shocking; for, after all, says a holy father, what matters it to a Christian, whether he shall expire in the midst of his connexions or in the country of strangers; in the bed of sorrow or the abyss of the waves; provided he dies in piety and righteousness? But what renders this terrible, is, the uncertainty whether you shall die in the Lord or in sin; that you shall know not what will be your lot in that other region where conditions change no more; into whose hands, at its departure from the body, your soul, trembling, a stranger and alone, shall fall; whether it shall be surrounded with light, and carried to the foot of the throne on the wings of blessed and happy spirits, or enveloped in darkness, and cast headlong into the gulf: you hang between these two eternities; you know not to which you shall be attached: death alone will disclose the secret; and in this uncertainty you remain tranquil, and indolently wait its approach, as though it were a matter of no importance to you, nor to determine your eternal happiness or misery? Ah! my brethren, were it even true that all ends with us, the impious man would still be foolish in saying, " Let us think not on death; let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." The more he found life agreeable, the more reason would he have to be afraid of death, which to him would, however, be only a cessation of existence. But we, to whom faith opens prospects of punishment or eternal rewards beyond the grave; we, who must reach the gates of death, still uncertain of this dreadful alternative, is there not a folly, — what do I say? — a madness, (not, to be sure, in professing the sentiments of the impious, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,)" in living as though we thought like him! Is it possible we can remain a single instant unoccupied with that decisive moment, and without allaying, by the precautions of faith, that trouble and dread into which this uncertainty must cast a soul who has not yet renounced his eternal hopes?
Thirdly. In all other uncertainties, the number of those who share the same danger may inspire us with confidence; or resources, with which we flatter ourselves, may leave us more tranquil; or, even at the worst, the disappointment becomes a lesson, which teaches us, to our cost, to be more guarded in future. But, in the dreadful uncertainty in question, the number of those who run the same risk can diminish nothing from our danger; all the resources with which we may flatter ourselves on the bed of death, are, in general, merely illusive; and religion itself, which furnishes them, dare ground but small hopes on them: in a word, the mis-
