funeral dirge. And when life shall have merged into death, time into eternity, then, as the Scripture says: " The worldlings shall have slept their sleep and awakening shall find nothing in their hands." Then looking at those who, while here, were dead to the world but awake to God and the best interests of their souls, the worldlings shall say: " These are they whom we had sometime in derision and for a parable of reproach. We fools esteemed their life madness and their end without honor, and, behold, now they are numbered among the children of God."
Brethren, if the householder only knew when the thief would come, he would sit up and prevent his house being robbed. We know that the Lord will come like a thief in the night — surely come, but when, we know not; and blessed is that servant whom He shall find watching. Therefore, St. Paul's first reason for our spiritual awakening is, that being vigilant in time, we may provide for our last end, lest awakening only in eternity we find the folly of our lives irreparable. " Now is the hour for rising," he says, " now is the day of salvation." Our age, the Christian era, is as it were the morning of God's own day — midway between the night of infidelity that preceded it, and the full noontime of the beatific vision that is to come. " Before Christ," as Isaias says, " darkness covered the earth and a shadow over the people," so that they saw and knew little or nothing of God's transcendent glory. The blessed in heaven,, on the other hand, see God as He is in the full noonday of His splendor; while we, by the aurora of Chris-
