these objects, the only ones which can occupy his thoughts, or present themselves to his fancy, only open to him the blackest prospects, which overwhelm him with despair.
For what can the past offer to a sinner, who, extended upon the bed of death, begins now to yield up dependence upon life, and reads, in the countenances of those around him, the dreadful intelligence that all is over with him? What now does he see in that long course of days which he has run through upon the earth? Alas! he sees only vain cares and anxieties; pleasures which passed away before they could be enjoyed, and iniquities which must endure for ever.
Vain cares. His whole life, which now appears to have occupied but a moment, presents itself to him, and in it he views nothing but one continued restraint and a useless agitation. He recalls to his mind all he has suffered for a world which now flies from him; for a fortune which now vanishes; for a vain reputation, which accompanies him not into the presence of God; for friends, whom he loses; for masters, who will soon forget him; for a name, which will be written only on the ashes of his tomb. What regret must agitate the mind of this unfortunate wretch, when he sees that his whole life has been one continued toil, yet that nothing to the purpose has been accomplished for himself! What regret, to have so often done violence to his inclinations, without gaining the advance of a single step toward heaven! — to have always believed himself too feeble for the service of God, and yet to have had the strength and the constancy to fall a martyr to vanity and to a world which is on the eve of perishing!
Alas! it is then that the sinner, overwhelmed, terrified at his own blindness and mistake, no longer finding but an empty space in a life which the world had alone engrossed; perceiving, that, after a long succession of years upon the earth, he has not yet begun to live; leaving history, perhaps, full of his actions, the public monuments loaded with the transactions of his life, the world filled with his name, and nothing, alas! which deserves to be written in the book of eternity, or which may follow him into the presence of God. Then it is, though too late, that he begins to hold a language to himself, which we have frequent opportunities of hearing. "I have lived, then, only for vanity? Why have I not served my God as I have served my masters? Alas! were so many anxieties, and so much trouble, necessary to accomplish my own destruction? Why, at least, did I not receive my consolation in this world? I should have enjoyed the present, that fleeting moment which passes away from me; and I should not then have lost all. But my life has been always filled with anxieties, subjections, fatigues, and restraints, and all these in order to prepare for me everlasting misery. What madness, to have suffered more toward my own ruin, than was required to have accomplished my salvation; and to have regarded the life of the upright, as a melancholy and an insupportable one; seeing they have done nothing so difficult for God, that I have not performed an hundred-fold for the
