SERMON X.
ON THE DEATH OF A SINNER, AND THAT OF A RIGHTEOUS CHARACTER.
"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." — Rev. xiv. 13.
There is something peculiarly striking and incomprehensible in the human passions.
All men wish to live: they look upon death as the most dreadful of all evils: all their passions attach them to life: yet, nevertheless, those very passions incessantly urge them toward that death for which they feel such horror; nay, it should even seem, that their only purpose in life is to accelerate the moment of death.
All men natter themselves that they shall die the death of the righteous; they wish it, they expect it. Knowing the impossibility of remaining for ever on this earth, they trust that, before the arrival of their last moment, the passions which at present pollute and hold them in captivity, shall be completely overcome. They figure to themselves, as horrible, the lot of a sinner who expires in his iniquity and under the wrath of God; yet, nevertheless, they tranquilly prepare for themselves the same destiny. This dreadful period of human life, which is death in sin, strikes and appals them: yet, like fools, they blindly and merrily pursue the road which leads to it. In vain do we announce to them, that, in general, men die as they have lived. They wish to live the life of a sinner, yet, nevertheless, to die the death of the righteous.
My intention, at present, is not to undeceive you with regard to an illusion so common and so ridiculous, (let us reserve this subject for another occasion); but since the death of the righteous appears so earnestly to be wished for, and that of the sinner so dreadful to you, I mean, by a representation of them both, to excite your desires for the one, and to awaken your just terrors for the other. As you must finally quit this world in one of these two situations, it is proper to familiarize yourselves with a view of them both, that, by placing before your eyes the melancholy spectacle of the one, and the soothing consolations of the other, you may be enabled to judge which of the lots awaits you; and, consequently, to adopt the necessary means to secure the decision in your favour.
In the picture of the expiring sinner, you will see in what the world, with all its glory and pleasures, terminates; from the recital of the last moments of the righteous man, you will learn to what virtue conducts, in spite of all its momentary checks and troubles. In the one, you will see the world from the eyes of a sinner in the moment of death; and how vain, frivolous, and different from what it seems at present, will it then appear to you! In the other, you will see virtue from the eyes of the expiring
