lead a holy life. cessity of trying to extirpate the vices that are now, alas! so common. For who of us is not reminded of death, and that, too, even frequently, either by our faith, or by daily experience, or as we have seen on the last occasion, by the sight of a corpse being carried to the grave, or by a monument in a churchyard, or by meeting people clad in mourning, or by our own bodily weakness and failing health? Even those who do their utmost to fly the thought of death are compelled to think of it against their will. For it is brought before their minds by their own horror of and aversion to it, by their unwillingness to hear of it, by the medicines and other means they use to ward it off, by the fear they have of being separated from their pleasures worldly goods, comforts, and luxuries by a sudden and early death. So it is; there are many things that remind us that we must die, no matter how much we try to shun the thought of death; but the thought thus inspired is generally a superficial one, that touches only the imagination—a useless thought that annoys without helping one to amendment of life.
It must be a serious, careful thought of death. Shown by a simile. The recollection of death should be lively, effective, and apt to have an influence on our future actions, such as God spoke of to His servant Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy: “O that they would be wise and would understand, and would provide for their last end!”[1] That is, that they would now, during their lifetime, find out what will be good for them at the end, what will be then a source of joy, of sorrow, of terror to them, and would now try to do what they shall then wish to have done, to amend what they shall then wish to have amended, to avoid what they shall then wish to have avoided. O that all would think of death in that way! Consider the horse, the mule, the ass (pardon me, rational human beings, if I bring forward such unreasoning, stupid animals as an example in this weighty matter); consider, I say, how they act when one tries to lead them over a frozen river in the winter; you will see how they, while still on the bank, try the ice with their fore feet, in order to see if it is strong enough to bear their weight. Nature has implanted this instinct in them, that they may not expose their lives to danger. According to Pliny, the fox, cunning as he is in other matters, shows a peculiar cunning in this; although he is light and swift of foot, he does not venture over a frozen stream until he has first studied the nature of the ice. Mark how he does that. He
- ↑ Utinam saperent, et intelligerent, ac novissima providerent!—Deut. xxxii. 29.
