shared in their danger and glory; our annals will convey them down to our latest posterity; but to you they are already but a dream, but a momentary flash, which is extinguished, and which every day effaces more and more from your remembrance. What, then, is this small portion you have still to accomplish? Can you believe that the days to come have more reality than those already past? Years appear long while yet at a distance; arrived, they vanish, they slip from us in an instant; and scarcely shall we have looked around us, when, as if by enchantment, we shall find ourselves at the fatal term, which still appeared so distant that we rashly concluded it would never arrive. View the world, such as you have seen it in your youthful days, and such as you now see it: new personages have mounted the stage; the grand parts are filled by new actors; there are new events, new intrigues, new passions, new heroes in virtue as well as in vice, which engage the praises, derisions, and censures of the public; a new world, without your having perceived it, has insensibly risen on the wrecks of the first; every thing passes -with and like you; a velocity, which nothing can stop, drags all into the gulf of eternity: yesterday our ancestors cleared the way for us; and to-morrow we shall do the same for those who are to follow. Ages succeed each other; the appearance of the world incessantly changes; the dead and living continually replace and succeed each other. Nothing stands still; all changes, all wastes away, all has an end. God alone remaineth always the same: the torrent of ages, which sweeps away all men, flows before his eyes; and, with indignation, he sees weak mortals, carried down by that rapid course, insult him while passing; wish, of that transitory instant, to constitute all their happiness; and, at their departure from it, fall into the hands of his vengeance and wrath. Where, says the apostle, amongst us, are now the wise? And a man, were he even capable of governing the world, can he merit that name from the moment that he forgets what he is and what he must be?
Nevertheless, my brethren, what impression on us does the instability of every thing worldly make? The death of our relations, friends, competitors, and masters? We never think that we are immediately to follow them! we think only of decking ourselves out in their spoils; we think not on the little time they had enjoyed them, but only on the pleasure they must have had in their possession: we hasten to profit ourselves from the wreck of each other: we are like those foolish soldiers, who, in the heat of battle, when their companions are every moment falling around them, eagerly load themselves with their clothes; and scarcely are they put on, when a mortal blow at once deprives them of their absurd decorations and life. In this manner the son decks himself with the spoils of the father; closes his eyes; succeeds to his rank, fortune, and dignities; conducts the pomp of his funeral, and leaves it more occupied with, more affected by, the new titles with which he is now invested, than instructed by the last advices of a dying parent; than afflicted for his loss, or even undeceived with regard
