our actions, and considered attentively that the very moment the breath leaves the body, there follows a judgment which decides our misery or happiness for all eternity, we would never sin, nor die miserably, as death in this case would be a sovereign preservative from sin and a powerful incentive to virtue. Permit me, then, to engage your attention with the thoughts of death, and to point out the salutary effects that a frequent and serious consideration of it is productive of. The just inan, who is always mindful of death, stands prepared for the awful moment, meets it with confidence and smiles on its approach. The dying worldling, on the contrary, who lives as if he was never to die, is filled with anguish, terrors, apprehensions and remorses. The consolations and advantages of the one; the fears, alarms and perplexities of the other. Behold the entire subject of the following discourse. Let us, as usual, implore the divine aid through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. Ave Maria.

Nothing is more certain than that we must all die, though nothing is more uncertain than the hour and manner of our death, and the tenor of the sentence we shall then meet with. The day will infallibly come, and God only can tell how soon, when we shall never more see the night. And the night will come when we shall never more see the ensuing morning. What is become of all the famous heroes of antiquity, and of all the mighty monarchs and celebrated beauties, who heretofore made such a noise and figure on the theatre of the world? Their dust lies blended with the common earth, and few or none now think of them, or even know that they were ever in being. No sooner did they breathe their last breath, but they became pale, stiff, loathsome, hideous and putrid. Scarce one of their dearest friends could endure to watch them a single night, and their nearest relations were the first to turn their dead bodies out of doors, and to lay them deep under ground lest they should infect the air. All the esteem and applause which they acquired in the world was not able to procure them a moment's satisfaction in the grave, where they found no other inheri tance, no other ornaments or diet than indigence, worms and infection. Just so will it be with us in a few years. We shall be wrapped up in a shroud, nailed up in a narrow coffin, carried to the grave, confined to five or six feet of earth and laid under a cold stone, to be eaten up by worms, to be reduced to a handful of dust and ashes, to be trampled upon by future generations, and to be no more thought of than if we never had existed. We are all hastening to that critical period as fast as the wings af time can carry us, and when we have once arrived at it, and set our foot within the gates of eternity, there is no coming back. That very instant the misery or felicity of man is decided for ever and ever; and if it be a miserable eternity into which he has stept, there is no remedy, no redemption. This is what renders death so awful. If we dię well, our hap

piness is secured for the whole length of eternity; if we die ill, we shall be miserable and unhappy without end, as long as God will be God. It is in this light we should consider death ass connected with our eternal happiness or misery; and since this is a matter of infinite consequence, it is our interest as well as our duty to think frequently and seriously of it, and to make the thoughts of it the rule of our conduct. St. Jerom remarks, that a frequent consideration of death is a powerful means to wean our affections from the world, and to make us seek that real and permanent happiness above, which is not to be found here below on earth. Nothing exposes more clearly to our view the instability and vanity of all sublunary things; nothing is more capable of pulling down the pride of man, and keeping him within the bounds of Christian humility. It contributes very much to check the violence of his passions and to curb his vicious inclinations. It sets him above the power of the delusive charms of the world, and disengages his heart from all im moderate attachment to its perishable riches, empty pleasures and transitory enjoyments. In short, it animates him to the practice of those duties which God commands and religion prescribes.*!

The very Pagans themselves were taught by the light of nature, the utility and good effects of thinking frequently of their mortality, and contracting a kind of familiarity with death. Profane history informs us, that the remembrance of death was one of the principal circumstances of their most solemn pomps, and that they deemed it a religious duty to preserve the ashes of their ancestors in urns, in order to be constantly reminded thereby that they were mortal men. The Romans in their triumphs, the Grecians in the coronation of their Emperors, and the Egyptians in their public feasts, made use of certain striking emblems of human mortality, lest the honours and dignities to which they were exalted, and the banquets to which their guests were invited should make them forget that they were mortal men, or cause them to fall into any criminal excesses. It is related also of some Christian Emperors and Princes, that for the same purpose they had a representation of death placed constantly in their palaces before their eyes in the midst of their most valuable furniture, and that they ordered their to greet them every day with this salutation: Memento mori; Remember you are to die. It is still usual at the coronation of every new Pope, to burn a little stubble or flax to ashes in his presence, one of the attendants saying at the same time: Thus, holy Father, the glory of the world passes away, in order to remind him that the Papal dignity does not exempt him from being tributary to death. In like manner in the sacred ceremonies of Ash-Wednesday, the Church is accustomed to remind her children of their mortality, in the memorable words which the Almighty made use of when he pronounced sentence of death against our first parents, after their fall from the happy state of I i

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their original innocence: Remember, man, thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return. O that we made it our study to turn this great truth frequently in our thoughts; what happy fruits would it be productive of? Did we but lay out even one day in the month, as spiritual writers earnestly recommend, for meditating seriously on death, and for working ourselves into the dispositions, that we would willingly die in, and appear before the tribunal of the Sovereign Judge, what conversions, what a change and reformation would we behold in the morals and conduct of Christians? But, alas! they seldom think of death until death comes to seize on them, and then men generally die as they live, as St. Augustine observes.

Happy they who are ever watching and continually preparing for this hour by a virtuous life, this being the only security against a sudden and unprovided death! Happy the man who lives every day as if it were to be his last; it shall be well with him at the last hour, and he shall be blessed in his death. Unhappy on the other hand are they, who defer their preparation to their death-bed, and put the issue of a never-ending eternity upon the poor chance of a late repentance, when the dulness and stupidity caused by their last illness, scarce allow of any serious application of their thoughts to the most important of all their concerns! Unhappy the dying worldling who, bent only on enjoying the comforts and pleasures of this life, lives with little or no sense of God and of eternity! Is it to be admired that the approaches of death should be so terrible to him, and that he should be strangely apprehensive of its coming? O what a wide difference is there between his death and the death of the just man, who passes from time to eternity crowned with merit and surrounded with virtue? The death of the sinner, who having spent his life in the pursuit of worldly vanities, has no other offerings at the last hour to present to his angry Judge, than what he has extracted from his crimes and iniquities, is indeed a most dreadful evil, as the Royal Prophet says, Ps. xxiii. v. 22. His mirth and jollities are then come to their fatal period, and his eyes are taking an everlasting farewel of all the fond objects of his passions. This horrible divorce and separation makes him shudder in the most bitter anguish and grief whilst he beholds himself violently torn from all he possesses and enjoys, even from his very body which he loved too well. The Pagan philosopher considered this only, when he defined death the King of Terrors, and of all terrible things that which is the most dreadful. But what is more alarming than this separation is, that all the former notions of the dying worldling are overturned in this awful moment; an entire new scene is opened to him, and he begins to see things in a different point of view from what he did before. His conscience is a confused chaos; a thousand perplexing thoughts disturb him; his habits of spiritual sloth grow stronger than ever; he opens his eyes, and sees that riches and honours which he so eagerly pursued,

were mere illusions, and that his former pleasures were no bét ter than dreams and shadows which passed in a moment, and left but a cruel sting behind them that he is not able to stifle. He now beholds the treacherous world forsaking him in the day of his distress, and the prospect of the abyss of eternal misery which discloses itself by degrees, fills his mind with alarms and terrors that no tongue can express. If he dies insensible, as often happens to those who forget God in their health, his situa tion is the more desperate and deplorable, because the instant that his miserable soul leaves his body in the state of mortal sin unrepented, she is irretrievably lost, and sentenced to burn in unquenchable flames. She is abandoned by, God and his An gels, and given over a prey to merciless devils, who insulting her may be supposed to cry out; Let men on earth crown the carcass of this sinner with pompous monuments, epitaphs, elegies and panegyrics, his soul is our victim now, as his body will also be after the general judgment.

All these objects, which appear so frightful to the dying worldling at his last hour, are real motives of joy and springs of spiritual consolation to the just man at the approach of death; for if he reflects on the world, which he is going to forsake, he considers it as a tempestuous sea, filled with rocks and quicksands; he looks on it as a place of banishment and a vale of misery, where man is engaged in a continual warfare, surrounded by a thousand enemies, constantly exposed to danger, and every moment liable to perish. Instead of being deceived like the sinful worldling, by false appearances, he beholds the tempting allurements, fawning pleasures and transitory riches of the world, as nothing else but mere vanity and affliction of spirit, as Solomon declared from the throne. He regards its enjoyments as insignificant trifles, painted toys and empty bubbles, which their admirers no sooner offer to lay hold of, but they dissolve into air. They have slept out their sleep, says the Royal Prophet, and when they awoke they found nothing in their hands of all those things which in their dream they seemed to possess. This is a true description of the vanity of worldly enjoyments, which only bring with them a momentary satisfaction, and are quickly fol lowed by perplexing cares, apprehensions and remorse. just man being well convinced of this truth, wishes to be res cued from the dangerous snares and embarrassments of this mortal life; he longs, like St. Paul, to be disengaged from the prison of the flesh, and desires in the secret of his heart the disunion of his soul and body, as the only way to a real and lasting happiness. He considers with great tranquillity and composure of mind, the passage which he is going to make out of the world, as a happy deliverance from his pilgrimage. He looks upon himself here on earth as an exile, solicitous to return to his native country, as a traveller hastening to the end of his journey, as a captive impatient to be freed from his chains and to be released from his bondage. Blessed with these

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Christian sentiments, the hour of death is welcome to him, and consummates all his wishes. He forsakes without regret what he possessed in the world, as if he did not possess it, and what he made use of, as if he did not use it, according to the expression of the Apostle.

Death, on the contrary, appears terrible to the dying worldling. The strong and criminal friendship which he contracted with the world, makes him unwilling to part it; for, as St. Augustine observes, a person does not part without regret what he sets his heart upon. Dazzled with the glittering shew of the vanities of this life, he places in it all his felicity, and if it depended upon him, his entire hopes and expectations would be centred on this side of the grave. Is it then to be admired, that when death shall force and violently tear him away from the enjoyment of these imaginary pleasures, his heart should be agitated with strange convulsions, and that the bitterness of his soul should be equal to the avarice of his mind? Is it to be wondered at, that he should cry out with the impious King mentioned in Holy Writ, Is it thus, cruel death, that you make so bitter a separation? Is it thus that you rob me of what I esteemed most valuable and charming in life? O what anguish, what confusion, what dreadful temptations of despair will then arise? Whatever way the dying worldling turns himself to seek for ease or comfort, he can find none. Before his eyes he beholds an innumerable multitude of horrid oaths, curses, blasphemies, criminal excesses, and other grievous sins, which stare him in the face with all their deformity. If he looks back into his past life, he finds the good works he has done too inconsiderable when balanced with his multiplied crimes. The remembrance of the graces, invitations and calls of Heaven, which he resisted; the many opportunities of storing up eternal treasures, which he neglected; the talents and gracious gifts of God which he misemployed, the precious time that he squandered away, the holy sacraments which he abused, set before his eyes such a dismal scene of wo, distress and confusion, that he now experiences the truth of these words of the Royal Prophet, Ps. cxiv. The sorrows of death have encompassed me, and the perils of hell have found me. His very prayers fly in his face, and upbraid him with sloth and negligence. The sight of every thing about him, his wife, his children, his friends, his worldly substance, which he loved more than his God, serve now but to increase his anguish, and what still adds misery to misery, the pains and agonies of his sickness gave him little or no leisure or ability to apply himself seriously to the great work of a perfect conversion to God. But the just man will have nothing of this to fear at the hour of his death, because he never fixed his happiness on worldly trifles, but raising his heart to God, was always faithful to his divine law, and from thence proceeds another motive of consolation; for there is no earthly pleasure comparable to the peace and serenity of a virtuous