to prepare, to amend our lives, to do something for our soul; then we must die as we have lived, unprepared.
Shown by an example. Charles, surnamed the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, had no braver soldier in his army than a certain man named William. This man had been accustomed to arms from his earliest youth, and was a thorough soldier; he was always the first to encounter danger; he was often grievously wounded; but that did not lessen his courage; he purchased his promotion, not with money, but with his blood. Having grown grey in arms, he was sent to court to rest on his laurels, and there he was invested with a charge and dignity suitable to his merits; nor did he show less fidelity and energy in the affairs of state than courage and bravery in war. At last he fell into a mortal illness. His death in the eyes of the world ought to have been a glorious one, for he was laden with honors, he had ennobled and enriched his family, performed many heroic actions, and gained an undying name. When he was told that the end of his life was at hand, and death at his door, he opened his eyes wide and seemed lost in thought. Finally he broke out into this sorrowful complaint: And must I leave my dignity, my charge, my duke? Where shall I now have to go? I must appear at a strange court, where I have never done any service. I must go amongst lords and princes whose favor I have never tried to win. And how can the Duke of Burgundy help me now? What can he do for me? For his sake I have endured toil and labor for seventy years, in addition to shedding my blood for him; but to the Lord of Hosts, before whom I must now appear, I have not given a month, a day, a moment, nor even a thought. Give me back the years I have spent so ill, that I may make a better use of them, and turn them to my profit. With this tardy and useless repentance in his heart and on his lips he died. In his last will he ordered this short but pithy epitaph to be written over his grave: “Here lies William, who devoted his services to the court and forgot himself, and went out of this world without having learned why he came into it.”[1] And so it is with most people in the world.
How stupid, especially since no one can escape death. But what stupid, deplorable indifference that is in a reasoning man who has got the gift of faith, to be so careless in a business on which body and soul, and God and eternity, and everything depends! Seneca justly looked on him as a fool who feared death only when he heard the thunder rolling and saw the lightning
- ↑ Aulæ oblatus, sui oblitus, abiit e mundo ignarus cur venerit in mundum.
