I say, whether they recall the past; and here, my brethren, figure to yourselves a righteous character on the bed of death, who has long, by the practice of Christian works, prepared himself for this last moment, has amassed a treasure of righteousness, that he may not appear empty-handed in the presence of his Judge, and has lived in faith, that he may die in peace, and in all the consolations of hope; figure to yourselves this soul, reaching at last that final hour of which he had never lost sight, and with which he had always connected all the troubles, all the wants, all the self-denials, all the events of his mortal life: I say that nothing is more soothing to him than the remembrance of the past, — of his sufferings, of his mortifications, of all the trials which he has undergone. Yes, my brethren, it appears frightful to you at present to suffer for God; the smallest exertions upon yourselves, required by religion, seem to overpower you; you consider as unhappy those who bear the yoke of Jesus Christ, and who, to please him, renounce the world and all its charms; but, on the bed of death, the most soothing reflection to a faithful soul is the remembrance of what he has suffered for his God. He then comprehends all the merit of penitence, and how absurd men are to dispute with God a moment of constraint, which will be entitled to the recompense of a felicity without end and without measure; for then his consolation is, that he has sacrificed only the gratifications of a moment, of which there would only remain to him now the confusion and the shame, — that whatever he might have suffered for the world, would in this moment be lost to him; on the contrary, that the smallest suffering for God, a tear, a mortification, a vain pleasure sacrificed, an improper desire repressed will never be forgotten, but shall last as long as God himself. What consoles him is, that of all the human luxuries and enjoyments, alas! on the bed of death, there remain no more to the sinner who has always indulged in them, than to the righteous man who has always abstained from them; that they are equally past to them both; but that the one shall bear eternally the guilt of having delivered himself up to them, and the other the glory of having known how to vanquish them.
This is what the past offers to a faithful soul on the bed of death: sufferings, afflictions, which have endured but a little while, and are now to be eternally rewarded, — the time of dangers and temptations past, — the attacks made by the world upon his faith at last terminated, — the trials in which his innocence had run so many risks, at last disappeared, — the occasions in which his virtue had so nearly been shipwrecked, at last, for ever removed, — the continual combats which he had to sustain against his passions, at last ended, — and every obstacle which flesh and blood had always placed in the way of his piety, for ever annihilated. How sweet it is, when safely arrived in port, to recall the remembrance of past dangers and tempests! When victorious in the race, how pleasing to retrace, in imagination, our exertions, and to review those parts of the course most distinguished by the toils, the obstacles, and the difficulties which have rendered them celebrated.
