on his bed and knew that he should die.”[1] “After these things;”—after the earth had trembled before him; after he had conquered the greater part of the world by his forces, “he fell down upon his bed” in a mortal illness, and knew what he had not thought of before, that he must die. But could he not have learned that when he saw so many battle-fields covered with dead bodies? “He fought many battles, and slew the kings of the earth.”[2] That was the time for him to remember that he, too, had a mortal body, and that his turn would come. He might have learned it when he laid waste whole countries, and plundered kingdoms: “He went through even to the ends of the earth: and took the spoils of many nations: and the earth was quiet before him.”[3] Then, I say, he might have seen how death would one day come to him, and strip him of everything, leaving him bare and naked. But the last thing he thought of was his own death. It was only when he felt the poison working in his body, when he lay on his death-bed, that he became aware that it was time for him to die. But he knew it too late, and was surprised by death in the height of his pride and intolerable tyranny, and thus hurried into eternity. O Christians, how many there are amongst you who require a mortal illness, the very presence of death, to warn you effectively to prepare for eternity! After these things; after twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years squandered away without doing anything for salvation; after these things; after body and soul have been exhausted in the service of some earthly master, who cannot “help to gain heaven; after these things; after having devoted all one’s cares, thoughts, and labor to the world; after these things; after having suffered so much discomfort, annoyance, and misery without a supernatural intention, without resignation to the will of God; without any profit for eternity; after these things; after having spent in vanity, idleness, and sin of all kinds the precious time given by God; after these things; after having bestowed hardly a thought on the last end; after these things; after the conscience has been hardly once purified by a true repentance; “after these things he fell down upon his bed, and knew that he should die;” after all this death comes and summons him into eternity. Then it is too late to know that we must die. Then it is in vain that we sigh for time
