Scripture, the Church in her liturgy, and Nature with a thousand tongues, proclaim that man is dust and shall return to dust. Yet will such warning make no deeper or more lasting impression on your soul than do the Lenten ashes on your forehead? Damocles, they say, though crowned as king and seated at a royal banquet, failed to enjoy himself because above his head there hung suspended by a single hair a naked sword, — and you — will you revel in forbidden pleasures within the very swing of death's fierce scythe? Afloat in a frail bark on the sea of life, you cannot but feel that but an inch divides you from the ocean of eternity, and can you, notwithstanding winds and waves, still sleep the sleep of sin? Jonas voyaging to Tharsis in defiance of God, and Jesus on the sea of Galilee — each slept amid the storm, but neither Jonas' despair nor the conscious sanctity of Christ can be the secret of your unconcern. Your indifference is founded on the hope that the fates have allotted you length of days. Ah! remember that the thread of life that Clotho spins and Lachesis directs must pass between the busy shears of Atropos. To John in Patmos death appeared as a sickly knight on a jaded horse, but that vision of death is that of a saint desiring to be dissolved and be with God. To sinners such as you, death is an invincible warrior on a flying steed, armed with a spear to slay the weak, and arrows to kill from afar the unsuspecting strong. Aye, and on his heel is a spur that you yourselves have buckled there to hasten his approach — the spur of sin. " For," says Scripture, " by sin death comes into
