the Lord. That desire constitutes all our piety and consolation; and a Christian, not to long for that happy moment, but to dread, and even look upon it as a misfortune, 'is to fly in the face of Jesus Christ: to renounce all communication with him; to reject the promises of faith and the glorious title of a citizen of heaven; it is to centre our happiness on the things of the earth, to doubt of a future state, to regard religion as a dream, and to believe that all dies with us.
No, my brethren, death has nothing to a just soul but what is pleasing and desirable. Arrived at that happy moment, he, without regret, sees a world perish, which he had never loved, and which to him had never appeared otherwise than a confusion of vanities: his eyes close with pleasure on all those vain shows which the earth offers, which he had always regarded as the splendour of a moment, and whose dangerous illusions he had never ceased to dread: he feels, without uneasiness, — what do I say? — with satisfaction, that mortal body, which had been the subject of all his temptations, and the fatal source of all his weaknesses, become clothed with immortality: he regrets nothing on the earth, where he leaves nothing, and from whence his heart flies along with his soul? he even complains, not that he is carried off in the middle of his career, and that his days are concluded in the flower of his age; on the contrary, he thanks his deliverer for having abridged his sufferings with his years, for having exacted only a portion of his debt as the price of his eternity, and for having speedily consummated his sacrifice, lest a longer residence in a corrupted world should have perverted his heart. His trials, his mortifications, which had cost so much to the weakness of the flesh, are then his sweetest reflections: he sees that all now vanishes, except what he has done for God; that all now abandon him, his riches, relations, friends, and dignities, his works alone remaining; and he is transported with joy, to think that he had never placed his trust in the favour of princes, in the children of men, in the vain hopes of fortune, in things which must soon perish, but in the Lord alone, who remaineth eternally, and in whose bosom he goes to experience that peace and tranquillity which mortals cannot bestow. Thus tranquil on the past, despising the present, transported to touch at last that futurity, the sole object of his desires, already seeing the bosom of Abraham open to receive him, and the Son of Man, seated at the right hand of his Father, holding out for him the crown of immortality, he sleeps in the Lord: he is wafted by blessed spirits to the habitation of the holy, and returns to the place from whence he originally came.
May you, my brethren, in this manner see your course terminated.
