flashing: “O foolish man, and forgetful of your frailty, if you fear death only when it thunders!”[1] If there were any exceptions to the general law of death; if one by forgetting death and rejecting all thought of it could avoid it and save himself from the common fate; then, indeed, we should be excused for seeking all sorts of means of escaping it, of not thinking of it, instead of preparing for its approach; like little children who, when they imagine they see a ghost, put their hands before their eyes, and think that they cannot be seen then and are safe from all danger. But we, my dear brethren, may cover our eyes as much as we please, we may think of it or not, death will come on at his own pace, nearer and nearer every day, hour, and moment; and he will hurry us off without any one being able to protect us from him. The sentence already pronounced is irrevocable: “It is appointed unto men once to die,”[2] and no one is excepted. To all, rich and poor, young and old, healthy and sick, prince and peasant, are the words uttered: “Take order with thy house, for thou shalt die and not live.”[3] If we belonged to the number of those wicked and reckless infidels and atheists of whom Isaias says that they neither fear nor hope for anything after death, because they believe that the soul dies with the body, then we should be less inexcusable if like them we said: “And behold, joy and gladness, killing calves and slaying rams, eating flesh and drinking wine: Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die.”[4] Let us enjoy ourselves and let nothing interfere with our pleasures, for death will soon come, and then there will be an end of all. But the man who is persuaded that death is waiting for him; the Christian who is instructed and knows that there is another life after death which will never end; that on the last moment of his life depends his eternal happiness or misery; for such a one, I say, to forget death so easily and put off all preparation for it to the last moment, that is indeed a stupidity that we cannot sufficiently wonder at or deplore.
Shown by a parable. Let us, my dear brethren, for a moment put out of our minds the universality of the law of death, and try if our imaginations will not help us to grasp the truth we are considering. Sup-
- ↑ O te dementem et oblitum fragilitatis tuæ, si tunc times mortem cum tonat!—Senec. in quæst. natur.
- ↑ Statutum est hominibus semel mori.—Heb. ix. 27.
- ↑ Dispone domui tuæ, quia morieris tu, et non vives.—Isa. xxxviii. 1.
- ↑ Ecce gaudium et lætitia, occidere vitulos, et jugulare arietes, comedere carnes, et bibere vinum: Comedamus et bibamus, cras enim moriemur.—Ibid. xxii. 13.
