Such are the pretexts which the sinner who delays his conversion draws from the part of God. Let us now examine those which he takes from within himself.
Part II. — It is astonishing, my brethren, that, life being so short, the moment of death so uncertain, every instant so precious, conversions so rare, the examples of those who are taken unawares so frequent, and futurity so awful, so many frivolous pretexts can be urged for delaying a change of life. In all other dangers which threaten either our life, our honour, or our property, the precautions are prompt and ready, the danger alone is dubious and distant; here the danger is certain and present, and the precautions are always uncertain and remote. It seems either that salvation is an arbitrarything, or that our life is in our own hands, or that the time for our penitence hath been promised to us, or that to die impenitent is no great misfortune, — so strongly do all sinners lull themselves in this hope of being one day converted, without ever attempting a change of life. And what is still more incomprehensible in the delay of their penitence, is, that they all admit of the necessity of their conversion, of the bad state of their conscience, and that they all consider as the worst of evils, that of dying in that fatal state; and, nevertheless, that they all defer withdrawing from it, under pretexts so childish, that even the gravity of the Christian pulpit suffers in refuting and overthrowing them.
Age, the passions, the consequences of a change of life, which they dread the being able to support, — such are the vain pretexts inwardly alleged for delaying that conversion which God demands of us.
I say, in the first place, the age. They wish to allow the years of youth to pass away, to which a consideration so important as piety seems little suited; they wait a certain season of life, when, the bloom of youth effaced, the manners become more sedate, the attention more exact, the world less watchful upon us, even the mind riper and more capable of supporting that grand undertaking; they promise themselves to labour at it, and that they will not then allow any thing to divert them from it.
But, it would be natural to ask you first, who hath told you that you shall arrive at the term which you mark to yourself; that death shall not surprise you in the course of those years which you still allot to the world and to the passions; and that the Lord, whom you do not expect till the evening, shall not arrive in the morning, and when you least think of it? Is youth a certain safeguard against death? See, without mentioning here what happens every day to the rest of men, if, even in confining yourself to the small number of your friends and of your relations, you shall find none for whom the justice of God hath dug a grave in the first years of their course, who, like the flower of the field, blooming to the morn, have withered before the close of day, and have left you only the melancholy regret of seeing so speedily blasted, a life of which the blossoms had promised so fair. Fool! Thy soul is to be re-demanded perhaps at the opening of thy race; and those projects of
