to render us watchful of our last hour, even lulls our vigilance. We never think on death, because we know not exactly in what age of life to place it: we even regard not old age as the term, at least sure and inevitable: the doubt of ever reaching that period, which surely ought to fix and limit our hopes to this side of decrepitude, serves only to stretch them beyond it. Unable to settle itself on any thing certain, our dread becomes a vague and confused feeling, which fixes on nothing; insomuch that the uncertainty, which ought only to dwell on the length or brevity of it, renders us tranquil on our existence itself.
Now I say, in the first place, that of all dispositions, this is the rashest and most imprudent; I appeal to yourselves for this truth. Is an evil which may take place every day, to be more disregarded than another which threatens you only at the expiration of a number of years? What! because your soul may every moment be recalled, you would tranquilly live as though you were never to lose it? Because the danger is always present, circumspection becomes less necessary? But in what other situation or circumstance of life, except that of our eternal salvation, does uncertainty become an excuse for security and neglect? Does the conduct of that servant in the gospel, who, under pretence that his master delayed to return, and that he knew not the hour when he should arrive, applied his property to his own purposes, as if he never were to render account of it, appear to you a prudent discharge of his duty? What other motives has Jesus Christ made use of to exhort us to incessant watching? and what in religion is more proper to awake our vigilance than the uncertainty of this last day?
Ah! my brethren, were the hour unalterably marked for each of us; were the kingdom of God, like the stars, to come at a known and fixed revolution; at our birth, were our portions written on our foreheads, the number of our years, and the fatal day which shall terminate them; that fixed and certain object, however distant, would incessantly employ our thoughts, would agitate and deprive us of every tranquil moment; we would always regard the interval before us as too short; that object, in spite of us, always present to our mind, would disgust us with every thing; would render every pleasure insipid, fortune indifferent, and the whole world tiresome and a burden: that terrible moment, which we would no more lose sight of, would repress our passions, extinguish our animosities, disarm revenge, calm the revolts of the flesh, and mingle itself in all our schemes; and our life, thus limited to a certain number of days, fixed and known, would be only a preparation for that last moment. Are we in our senses, my brethren? Death seen at a distance, at a sure and fixed point, would fill us with dread, detach us from the world and ourselves, call us to God, and incessantly occupy our thoughts; and this same death, uncertain, which may happen every day, every instant, — this same death, which must surprise us when we least expect it, which is perhaps at the gate, engages not our attention, and leaves us tranquil, — what do I say? — leaves us all our passions, our criminal attach-
