covery: they deceive him, in order that he may deceive himself. The Scriptures must be fulfilled: the sinner must be taken by surprise in this last moment. Thou hast said it, O my God! and thy words are the words of truth.
His surprises. — Abandoned by all the succours of art, delivered up alone to anguish and disease, he still cannot persuade himself that death is near. He flatters himself; he still hopes: the justice of God, it would seem, leaves him a remnant of reason, for the sole purpose of seducing himself. From his terrors, his astonishment, his inquietudes, we see clearly that he still comprehends not the necessity of death. He torments, he agitates himself, as if by these means he could escape death: but his agitations are only occasioned by regret for the loss of life, and are not the effects of grief for having wickedly spent it. The blinded sinner must be so to the end; and his death must be similar to his life.
In a word, his surprises. — He sees now that the world has all along deceived him; that it has continually led him from illusion to illusion, and from hope to hope; that things have never taken place exactly as he had promised himself; and that he has always been the dupe of his own errors. He cannot comprehend how his blindness could possibly be so constant; that for such a series of years he could obstinately continue to make such sacrifices for a world, for masters, whose only payment has been vain promises; and that his entire life has been one continued indifference on the part of the world to him, and an intoxication on his to the world. But what overpowers him is, the impossibility of remedying the mistake; that he can die only once; and that, after having badly run his race, he can no more recall the past, or, by retracing his steps, undertake a new trial. Thou art just, O my God! and thou wiliest that the sinner should in advance pronounce against himself, in order that he may afterward be judged from his own mouth.
The surprises of the dying sinner are, therefore, overwhelming; but the separations which take place in that last moment are not less so for him. The more he was attached to the world, to life, to all its works, the more does he suffer when a separation becomes inevitable. Every tie which must now be broken asunder, becomes a wound which rankles in his heart; every separation becomes a new death to his mind.
Separation from the riches which, with such constant and laborious attention he had accumulated, by means, perhaps, repugnant to salvation; in the possession of which he obstinately persisted, in spite of all the reproaches of his conscience, and which he had cruelly refused to the necessities of his brethren. — They now, however, escape from him; the mass of earth is dissipated before his eyes; his love, his regret for their loss, and the guilt of having acquired them, are the only remaining proofs that they were once in his possession.
Separation from the magnificence which surrounds him; from his proud edifices, in whose stately walls he once fondly believed he had erected an asylum against death; from the vanity and
