when they die is it not a corrupt body and a few rags to decay with them? When the great ones of this world die, hardly, for a little time, are they spoken of, and then they are not even remembered, " Their memorial is perished with them." (Ps. ix. 6.) And if these miserable ones are afterwards in hell, what do they do, and what do they say there? They weep and say, "What hath pride profited us? or what advantage hath the boasting of riches brought us? All those things are passed away like a shadow." (Wisd. v. 8, 9.) In what have our pomp and our riches helped us, if the whole has now passed away as a shadow, and there remains nought save punishment, weeping, and eternal despair?
" The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." (S. Luke xvi. 8.) Great truth! that the children of this world are prudent in the things of the world! What fatigues do they not brave to obtain that post or this inheritance! What diligence do they not expend to preserve the health of the body! They choose the means, the most safe, the best medicines, the best physicians, the best air! And for the soul, then, they are so negligent! Yet it is certain that health, posts, possessions, will one day have an end; but the mind and eternity never end. S. Augustine says, "We observe how much men suffer for the things which they wrongly love." What does not the vindictive, the thief, the incontinent suffer, in order to obtain his depraved wish! And then for the soul, they are not willing to suffer anything! O God, at the hour of death, in that time of truth, worldlings both know and confess their madness. Then every one says, " Oh, that I had forsaken all, and that I had become a saint!"
Philip II., King of Spain, sent for his son when on his deathbed, and unfolding his royal robe, showed to him his breast eaten by worms, and then he said, " Prince, see how we die, and how the pomp of the world ends." And afterwards he exclaimed, " Oh, that I had been a lay brother in some monastery, and not a monarch!" At the same time, he caused them to fasten a wooden cross to his neck by a cord, and having prepared the things for his death, he said to his son, " I wished thee, my son, to be present at this act, that you may see how at the
