in His grace blessed, because their labours are finished, and they go to their rest. " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours." (Rev. xiv. 13.)
The. torments which afflict the sinners, when dying, do not trouble the saints. " The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them." (Wisd. iii. I.) The saints do not grieve when they hear that Proficiscere which terrifies the worldly so much. The saints are not troubled when they have to leave their worldly goods, for they have kept their hearts severed from them. They go about ever repeating to themselves, " God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." (Ps. lxxiii. 25.)
Blessed are you, writes the Apostle to his disciples, who have been stripped of all your earthly possessions, for the sake of Jesus Christ. "Ye .... took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in Heaven a better and an enduring substance." (Heb. x. 34.) They do not grieve at leaving the honours, because they always detested them, and reckoned them, as they indeed are, nothing but smoke and vanity; they esteemed loving God, and being loved by God, their only honour. They do not grieve at leaving their relations, because they have only loved them in God; when dying, they commend them to that Heavenly Father, who loves them more than they, and trusting to be saved, they hope to be able to help them more, when they are in Paradise, than while on this earth. Finally, what they have ever said in life, " My God and my all," they repeat, with greater consolation and tenderness, when dying.
He, therefore, who dies loving God, is not tormented by the fears which death brings with it; but, on the contrary, he is pleased with them, thinking that his life is now ended, and that there is no more time to suffer for God, and to offer Him any more proofs of his love. Then, lovingly and peacefully, he gives Hun these last moments of his life, and consoles himself in uniting the sacrifice of his death with the sacrifice which Jesus Christ once offered for him on the cross to His eternal Father. And thus he joyfully expires, saying, "I will lay me down in
