fterner and more startling tone. Perhaps He means this as His laft warning. Perhaps, if you neglect it, He will leave you to yourself, and trouble you no more. But even if He fhould bear with you awhile longer, you can never be again as though this had not come upon you. Take heed what you do, for it is written "Thou shalt not tempt the LORD thy God."

But now, Beloved in the LORD, if your confcience, honeftly confulted, bears you witness, that what has hitherto been faid, is not fairly applicable to your condition, —and that although you have to lament many fhort-comings, your heart is so far right with GOD, that you are, in the main, endeavouring to ferve Him, and to walk in His fear, there are ftill many causes which may have made it needful that you fhould have a fharp affliction, and also that Death should be brought vividly before you.

The first and most obvious of thefe is that you may not hitherto have made adequate preparation for your own departure out of this world; you may have made little progress in the fcience of dying daily.

We all fhrink from the thought of dying; and hence Satan finds it easy to tempt us

to

to shrink from the thought of death. The gradual breaking up of our phyfical ftrength, the failure of the organs of fenfe, and of the comforts dependent upon them, chronic fufferings, acute forms of difeafe, depreffion of the animal fpirits, irritability of the nerves, restleffnefs, want of fleep, all those exhaustive proceffes which are the appointed means of wearing down our powers, and of bringing in irremediable decay of the vital functions, are, in their different ways, very irksome or very painful, (as you, perhaps, have, of late but too fadly witneffed) and we dread contemplating them. And the decay and corruption which enfue when the fleshly tabernacle is diffolved are very abhorrent to flesh and blood: putrefaction and the worm; the confinement of the fastclofed coffin; the cold, and damp, and darkness of the grave; the oppreffive weight of the fuperincumbent foil; these are things, which in defiance of the powers of reafon, and the theoretical conviction that with the extinction of life comes extinction of fenfe and feeling, we find tormenting us, choking us, horrifying us, when we think of them as applicable to ourselves; and fo we put them from us: we tacitly refolve that we will

C 2

will not make ourselves miferable by thinking of them till we are compelled to do so.

It is quite natural to do this. It is as much an instinct as felf-prefervation. But the feeling is not one to which it is wife in a Christian to yield. It is better and safer to look on death in all its bearings, as the punishment of fin, the penalty of a fallen nature, that penalty which would not have been limited to temporal diffolution only if man had found no REDEEMER from the power of the grave. If we will not fo far follow those faints of GOD who found it beneficial to their foul's health, that their shrouds should hold a place in their wardrobes, and their coffins fhould be their nightly refting places, it does behove us, from time to time, to

"Count the fad honours, coffin, bier, and pall,"

yea, to walk humbly, and mortify our proud wanton hearts, with the contemplation of ghaftlier, and more revolting images. We can afford to do this now, for, bleffed be GOD, the nature of death is changed fince the accomplishment of man's redemption. It was an action worthy of a great Saint, when S. Charles Borromeo bade the painter

fubfti

fubftitute an Angelic form bearing the golden key of Paradife, for the skeleton and fcythe by which the artist had represented Death. Still, it is wholesome for us, that we who are duft, fhould fometimes look upon the duft to which we are one day to

return.

Corruption and the worm may be fometimes, or rather I would fay frequently in our thoughts; but Death fhould be ever in them. Morning by morning the thought fhould be, "This day may be my last." Evening by evening, one queftion at least of our nightly felf-examination should be, "Am I now trying to realize to myself that I may be in another world before morning?" S. Paul's teftimony with regard to himself was "I die daily." And the expreffion was hardly a metaphorical one. So perpetually was he in the very furnace of trial, in afflictions, in neceffities, in diftreffes, in ftripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings," that he was ever, as it were, in the prefence of death, and life had fo little of attraction, that he well might " groan, earnestly defiring to be clothed upon with the house which is from heaven." There

was

was not much in those days to make men cling to life nor is there in reality more now. Only there is more glare, and unsubstantial glitter, and the world has more allurements to make us defire to remain in it,-to tempt us to forget our pilgrim state, and to make it our home.

S. Ignatius, at the close of his epistle to the Philadelphians, fpeaks of one Rheus Agathopus (who perhaps accompanied him on his way to martyrdom) as "having taken leave of life." I conceive this to exprefs in few words the highest and happiest ftate to which any of us can attain. People talk of the bitterness of death being past, but to be able to live on, in calm, contented, patient waiting, when the bitterness of life is past,-when we have discovered all its falfenefs, and hollowness, experienced its disappointments, and been haraffed by its temptations, seems to me to pertain to the most exalted walk of Faith. This implies fuch a complete mortification of the natural will, that it is, in truth, to "die daily."

What know you, dear Reader, of such a ftate? To what extent have you fet your house in order? Have you been

fhrink