their way into the foundations, and the walls and beams begin to lean on one side. Meanwhile the owner goes on furnishing and ornamenting the house; he has it plastered on the outside and all the rooms newly painted and hung with beautiful tapestry; the windows are carefully cleaned and the grounds outside laid out most tastefully in pleasure gardens. What do you think of all this? Does that man act wisely? By no means, you say; the whole place will be about his ears in a few days; instead of furnishing and decorating, he should try to save whatever he can of his property before the building falls in ruins; it is certainly no place for a man to live in.
Now, my dear brethren, all of us who live on this earth are condemned to death. The sentence is already pronounced on us, as St. Paul says: "It is appointed to men once to die." (Heb 9:27) Our life is the way to the place of execution, on which we are really led to death. Our life and body is that building that is eaten away by the rushing river; time constantly gnaws at and undermines the foundation; every moment we live takes away a piece of our lives that we shall never get back again; every breath we draw forces on another breath, until we come to the last. Thus the beginning of our life is also the beginning of our death. The last grain of sand that falls in the hour-glass does not make the hour, it merely marks the end of the hour; so, too, the last breath does not make death; it simply shows that death and life have come to an end together. Just as the iron has in itself the rust, wood the worm, cloth the moth that gradually destroys it, so also the human body bears about in itself from the first moment of its existence the matter by which its own life will be gradually and insensibly eaten away.
Yet, although we are thus every day, hour, moment hurrying to the gallows, to deathlike condemned criminals; although every day, hour, moment our house is being undermined by the rushing river and ready to fall; yet the most of us are principally, nay, almost solely occupied by our efforts to adorn and furnish the falling house, to pamper and fatten the body. That we may live comfortably in this house we work from morning till night, amassing money, buying land, building, going to law for the sake of a square foot of ground, as if a little world depended on it; while for the sake of a wretched handful of money our precious souls, God and heaven are freely staked. What arrant folly
