believe that we shall not die. That is to say, we readily acknowledge that we shall one day die, that this is a severe law to which we must at last submit; but we console ourselves with the thought that it will not be soon, that we have much time still left, that our hour is not yet come; and this persuasion prevents our cultivating that lively sense of the approach of death, and those dispositions which are necessary to prepare us for the solemn period. For observe, my hearers, that what will lead us to prepare for a happy death is not simply to believe, as a speculative truth, that we must die; but to be deeply affected and penetrated with this sentiment: I shall die, and my hour approaches; I shall die, and this will happen in some one of those years which I am promising myself in vain; I shall die, and this will happen at that time, and in that manner, which I the least thought of. This would lead us firmly to adopt the noble resolution of reforming our lives, of thinking seriously and efficaciously upon death.

To what measures then does the enemy of our salvation have recourse? Hear, my brethren, the most dangerous artifice which he makes use of to keep us in impenitence. He leaves to us all those thoughts concerning death which he knows we should not improve to any good purpose; and takes from us that which alone would be capable of exciting us to serious consideration. He does not attempt to persuade us we shall never die. This would be too gross an error, and one of which indeed he has no need in order to destroy us; but he persuades us that we shall not die to-day, nor to-morrow, nor for a long time yet to come, and this suffices him. For never calculating upon death as near at hand, we neglect to draw those salutary consequences from its certainty which would lead us to repentance. It is in this sense that St. Chrysostom applies those words in Genesis, "Ye shall not surely die." The remark of that Father is worthy of our attention. He

observes that the devil, that lying spirit, in order to seduce us, daily employs the same stratagem which he used in the terrestrial paradise, against our first -parents; and that when he designs either to lead us to commit sin, or to induce us to defer repentance, one of the most common methods by which he attains his object is to suggest to us, as he did to the first man and woman, that we shall not surely die. But how can he blind us in this respect? If God had not told us in his word, if reason did not convince us, would not experience alone be more than sufficient to force us to believe that we shall die? What probability is there that on this subject we can be made to contradict not only our religion and our reason, but the incontestible and evident testimony of our senses? It was not so astonishing that our first father should fall into such a snare; for he had not seen any instance of death, and in consequence of the happy state of holiness in which God had created him, he enjoyed uninterrupted health. Therefore, feeling no weakness which could warn him of mortality, he might the more easily suffer himself to be deceived by the vain promise of the tempter, and flatter himself that he should not die. But to say to us, my hearers, to us whose eyes are continually struck with the image of death-whom death surrounds on all sides, who see it in others, and who, by our infirmities, already feel the sad proofs of it in ourselves,--to say to us, "You shall not die;" this is the last temptation by which it would seem the devil would attack us, and still less deceive us. It is nevertheless that by which he the oftenest attacks us; and what is still more strange, it is that by which he succeeds the best. The artifice is gross, I acknowledge; but cu blindness, in being deceived by it, is the more deplorable. And yet this is every moment the case. For our great adversary, who continually seeks our ruin, and who knows our weak side, has only to take as by that, and to say to us; "You shall not yet die ;"

and we believe him. He has only to suggest to us that we are young; that there is no need of haste; that we shall hereafter have leisure to think upon ourselves; without further examination we credit his suggestions, and securely live in sin, indulging curselves in the irregularities of a worldly life. Why? Because we are never persuaded, I mean efficaciously so, that we must die.

It seems that in this respect there is a secrect understanding between us and our great enemy. For instead of being ever firmly persuaded of the certainty of death, we wish not to be, we fear to be, we put out of view all those objects which might serve to convince us; and those prospects of death which ought to be the means of our sanctification do commonly but trouble us, grieve us, astonish us, or even sometimes irritate us, when at the approach of our last hour, any thing is said to us on the subject, and the least proposition made to us referring to the danger of our situation.

Hence it happens that most men close their lives without really believing that they shall die, and almost with a presumptuous assurance that they shall not. Hence it happens that those to whom there certainly and evidently remain but a few days of life, are however the very persons who labor the most for life. How many people are there, who, struck with a mortal malady, and already given over by public opinion, form designs, engage in enterprises, and dis. quiet themselves with a thousand temporal affairs as if they had the greatest concern in future worldly events? How many old men are there, who, borne. down with a weight of years, and having but one step more to take to the grave, are as greedy after the things of the world, as if they were to posses them for ages?

Hence it happens that the great, by a fatality, if I. dare to say it, attached to their condition, never know their situation in this respect; not even when they are at the moment of death; and this because all who

come near them are prepossessed with the idea that they wish not to know it. Every one conspires. to deceive them, at a time when it is most important to open their eyes. People assure them that every thing appears in their favor, when it is evident that every appearance is against them; they congratulate them upon any slight alteration in their case seemingly for the better, and upon a change which may be favorable in appearance, but which is in reality only the last effort of sinking nature; they industriously, and with great care, conceal from them all the marks and presages which are discovered in them of certain death; they exaggerate to them the power and efficacy of medicines, without ever speaking to them of the sovereign remedy, which is repentance. In this manner every one deceives them; and from what motives? From motives wholly worldly; a wife from excess of tenderness; children from respect or interest; strangers from complaisance; domestics from fear so that they are always ignorant of the truth, and even when dying are still sure that they shall not die.

Hence it happens that those who, from their station and from the peculiar duties of their profession, ought to undeceive people in this respect, and to speak with less reserve, have so much difficulity to explain themselves. They rely upon one another to do this, the physician upon the clergyman who at this hour is called in, and the clergyman upon the physician; neither of them being willing, to be the messenger of important, though painful and distressing tidings, which, however, God has committed to them to deliver; and thus they sacrifice to weak considerations the salvation of a soul, whose eternal destiny depended, in some measure, upon their faithfulness. Hence come so many precautions, so many disguises, so many evasions, in the last extremity, when it is thought necessary to press upon a sick man an attention to prayer, and religious

duties, as a preparation for death. People assure him, that he need not yet despair; that though he is exhorted to those religious duties, it is not because he is thought to be so dangerous as to admit of no longer delay; but that it is good to be prepared in season, that thus the mind may be at rest; that is to say, they take from him one of the most powerful motives to repentance, and perhaps the only one capable of affecting him, namely a near view of the judgment of God.

It was not thus that the prophet Isaiah conducted, when, in the name of the Lord, and with a holy boldness, he warned the king of Judah that his end approached, and that it was necessary for him to prepare himself to go to render an account to the sovereign judge. "Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die and not live." He pronounced this sentence without any softening. Thou shalt die. He had no regard, either to the royal grandeur of Hezekiah, or to the agitation into which this denunciation of death might throw him. Thou shalt die, O Prince, though a monarch and absolute in power. Ah, my hearers, where do we find in these times, such prophets, I do not say for kings and crowned heads, but even for persons in other stations; especially for those who have any distinction in the world, of birth or rank?

It is not astonishing that people should die, by unforeseen and singular events, without being sensible that they are near death. Such instances are terrible judgments of God, wherein, for the punishment of sinners, he suffers death to surprise them in their sins. But it is not of such events that I am now speaking. What I cannot sufficiently deplore, nor enough condemn, is that dying people, whom God is calling from life in the most common methods, those to whom death leaves, even to the last sigh, the free exercise of reason, those in whose favor divine justice relaxes from its demands, in accommodating