time flies: scarcely do a few moments now remain to him, and he must precipitate a confession for which the greatest leisure would hardly suffice, and which can precede but an instant the awful judgment of the justice of God. Alas! we often complain, during life, of a treacherous memory, — that we forget every thing, — that the minister of God is under the necessity of remedying our inattention, and of assisting us to know and to judge of ourselves: but in that last moment the expiring sinner shall require no assistance to recall the remembrance of his crimes: the justice of God, which had delivered him up during health to all the profundity of his darkness, will then enlighten him in his wrath.
Every thing around his bed of death awakens the remembrance of some new crime: servants, whom he has scandalized by his example; children, whom he has neglected; a wife, whom he has rendered miserable by unlawful attachments; ministers of the church, whom he has despised; riches, which he has abused; the luxury which surrounds him, for which the poor and his creditors have suffered; the pride and magnificence of his edifices, which have been reared up upon the inheritance of the widow and the orphan, or perhaps by the public calamity: every thing, in a word, the heavens and the earth, says Job, shall reveal his iniquity, and rise up against him; shall recall to him the frightful history of his passions and of his crimes.
Thus, the recollection of the past forms one of the most dreadful situations of the expiring sinner; because in it he finds nothing but labours lost; pleasures which have been dissipated the moment almost of their existence; and crimes which shall endure for ever.
But the scenes around him are not less gloomy to this unfortunate soul: his surprises, his separations, his changes.
His surprises. — He had always flattered himself that the hour of the Lord would not surprise him. Whatever had been said to him on the subject from the pulpit had not prevented him from assuring himself that his conscience should be properly arranged before the arrival of this dreaded moment. He has reached it, however, still loaded with all his crimes, without preparation, without the performance of a single exertion toward appeasing the wrath of the Almighty: he has reached it while he least thought of it, and he is now to be judged.
His surprises. — God strikes him in the zenith of his passions, — in the time when the thoughts of death were more distant from his mind, — when he had attained to places he had long ardently struggled for, and when, like the foolish man in the gospel, he had exhorted his soul to repose itself, and to enjoy in peace the fruit of its labours: it is in this moment that the justice of God surprises him, and he sees life, with every imaginary hope of happiness, blasted for ever.
His surprises. — He is on the brink of the gulf, and the Almighty willeth that no one shall dare to inform him of his situation. His relations flatter him; his friends leave him undeceived; they already lament him in secret as dead, yet they continue to speak of his re-
