to hell, I am sure that we shall curse and revile each other forever with a bitter hatred.
Of his former riches and pleasures, and of his present unhappy state. If he thinks of the money and wealth that he heaped up with so much toil and labor, or of the pleasures that he still hoped to enjoy, or of the honorable position that made him a great man in the eyes of the world; “O death,” exclaims the wise Ecclesiasticus, “how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that hath peace in his possessions!”[1] And if the bare remembrance of it is a torment, what will it be when death really comes and takes him away from everything? I am now to be hunted out of house and home, he will say to himself with sorrow of heart; I am to be driven away from all I possess without the hope of ever coming back again, without being able to bring with me a single farthing of my wealth, a single rag of clothing, a momentary pleasure of all my joys, a single thought of all my honors! Bare and naked I am going into the home of eternal poverty, shame, hunger, and thirst! If he considers the state of his body, he finds nothing but pain and suffering; his head is motionless; his hair is matted with the sweat of death; his eyes sunken and glassy; his lips drawn together; his teeth blackened; his tongue parched; his breast swollen by his efforts to breathe; his whole body is reduced to such weakness that he has hardly strength to breathe forth his miserable soul.
He is troubled on all sides. But all this is nothing compared to the anguish, fear, and terror that f111 his soul. According to the terrible words of St. Augustine, describing the state of a man dying in sin, wherever he turns he finds nothing but objects to increase his anguish and apprehension. “Over him is the angry Judge” who will condemn him; “below him the abyss of hell,” ready to swallow him up; “on his right side are his sins which accuse him” and cry out for vengeance on him; “on his left are legions of demons waiting to drag him down to eternal torments; inwardly he is tortured by the worm of conscience; outwardly by the death he cannot avoid. Where can he fly to out of all these miseries?”[2]
By his own conscience. How will he defend himself against the voice of his conscience, which represents to him in every detail and with the utmost clearness all his past sins, thus gnawing at his heart and oppressing
