the world, and the sting of death is sin." No flourish of trumpets heralds his onset, but down he swoops suddenly, like the Assyrians on Israel, like a wolf on the fold. " For the sinner," Scripture says, " the grave doth yawn thrice wider than for other men, and hell doth enlarge its mouth." In history, sacred and profane, you will find that the world's greatest sinners have almost invariably died sudden and unprovided deaths, whereas, according to the selfsame history, the strongest brake on death's chariot-wheel is self-denying virtue. For the virtuous are trees of precious wood which the grim woodsman, Death, will, before felling, allow to season and develop; but the wicked are as worthless timber which may at any time be cut down and used as firewood. And oh! remember that as the tree leans, so shall it fall — as a man lives, so shall he die. The salvation of a habitual sinner demands of God the exercise of more miraculous power than would suffice to cause the leaning oak to straighten up and lean and fall the other way. To expect such a miracle from God is blasphemous unto perdition. St. Jerome says that of one hundred thousand men invariably bad, scarce one finds mercy before God. Will you then imitate the hundred thousand, and take your chance of being the favored one? What, risk your soul! You may risk all the world beside, your goods and chattels you may, to weather the gale, cast overboard and afterwards recover, but not your soul, for that once lost is lost forever. What will the whole world profit you, if you lose your soul? And if the acquisition of a
