the fear of death will exercise such an influence over you that you cannot fix your mind on anything, much less on that important, exact, and long account that you will have to render to God of the life you have spent in sin. How hard and terrible death seems to him who has always kept his thoughts fixed on earthly things! For then he is told that he must completely lose and forever abandon all the riches and possessions he sought so eagerly, kept so carefully, and loved so dearly. What trouble and exasperation are felt by one who is altogether sunk in earthly things at the loss of an important law-suit! Or at seeing his crops, that were standing in the field, ripe for the sickle, suddenly destroyed and, as it were, torn from his hands by a storm! But all this is nothing compared to the sad news that he must at once and forever leave all that he holds dear—children, wife, house, lands, wealth, and life. Experience teaches that in such circumstances the mind is apt to be greatly disturbed and completely deranged. Who can then believe or hope that in such a case a sinner will be able to examine his hardened conscience, troubled and disturbed as he is, to collect his thoughts, to turn at once to God, to confess his countless sins, and to repent of them with his whole heart? Our Lord Himself, when He saw death coming, “began to fear and to be heavy.”[1] Condemned criminals, when they are told that their time is come, although they may be quite strong and healthy, lose their mind and courage to such an extent that they are incapable of forming even a sensible thought, and the priest who is attending on them must sometimes go away and leave them to themselves for a few hours, as I know well by experience. Now, what can be expected from a sick man who is tormented with the fear of death? If the lips of confessors were not closed, what might they not tell us of death-bed confessions and penitents! But suppose that you will have no difficulty in this way; perhaps you will think the danger not so great, and will therefore defer repentance still longer? For the word of God assures us that death will come when we least expect: “At what hour you think not the Son of man will come,”[2] as I have already shown to be the case from experience. Perhaps you will act as unfortunately many Christians do nowadays, who are ashamed to receive the last sacraments in time from some foolish, unchristian notion that then they will hare to die, although
