are thy past years and pleasures? Are they not vanished and lost in the flux of time, as if thou hadst put water into a sieve? Bethink thyself then of a retreat, and leave the world with the same content and satisfaction as thou wouldst do a plentiful table and a jolly company, upon a full stomach.

In some cases it requires more courage to live than to die. He that is not prepared for death shall be perpetually troubled, as well with vain apprehensions as with real dangers, but the important point is to secure a well-grounded hope of a blessed immortality.

All things have their seasons; they begin, they increase, and they die. The heavens and the earth grow old, and are appointed their periods. That which we call death is but a pause or suspension, and in truth a progress to life; only our thoughts look downwards upon the body, and not upwards upon things to come. All things under the sun are mortal; cities, empires,—and the time will come when it shall be a question where they are, and perchance whether they had a being or no. Some will be destroyed by war, others by luxury, fire, inundations, earthquakes. Why then should it trouble me to die, as a forerunner of an universal dissolution? What Providence has made necessary, human

prudence should comply with cheerfully; as there is a necessity of death, so that necessity is equal and invincible; none can complain of that which every man must suffer as well as himself; it is but a submission to the lot which the whole world has suffered that has gone before us, and so must they also who succeed us.

There are two things of great importance to us, viz. to live well; and, secondly, to die well. Το live as we should, and to die as we would; to live according to God's directions, and to die according to our own heart's desire.

Let us all so order our conversation in the world that we may live when we are dead, in the affections of the best, and leave an honourable testimony in the consciences of the worst. Let us oppress none; do good to all, that we may say when we die, as good Ambrose did, "I am neither ashamed to live, nor afraid to die."

Death is no more than a turning us over from time to eternity; it leads to immortality, and that is recompense enough for suffering of it.

The way to bring ourselves with ease to a contempt of the world is to think daily of leaving it.

It is this makes us averse to death, that it trans

lates us to things we are unacquainted with, and we tremble at the thought of those things that are unknown to us. We are naturally afraid of being in the dark, and death is a leap in the dark.

How miserable is that man that cannot look backward but with shame, nor forward without terror! What comfort will his riches afford him in his extremity? or what will all his sensual pleasures, his vain and empty titles, robes, dignities, and crowns avail him in the day of his distress?

Beauty is a flower which soon withers; health changes, and strength abates; but innocency is immortal, and a comfort both in life and death. The young may die shortly; but the aged cannot live long green fruit may be plucked off, or shaken down, but the ripe will fall of itself.

You are just taking leave of the world, and have you not yet learned to be friends with everybody? and that to be an honest man is the only way to be a wise one?

To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege, but to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

"Death," says Seneca, "falls heavy upon him who is too much known to others, and too little to himself."

It is remarkable that death increases our veneration for the good, and extenuates our hatred for the bad.

Riches profit not in the day of wrath; but a consciousness of well-doing will refresh our souls even under the very pangs of death.

The self-murderer ends his days in an act of abominable iniquity which he can never repent of.

The time is near when the great and the rich must leave his land and his well-built house; and of all the trees of his orchard and woods, nothing shall attend him to his grave, but oak for his coffin, and cypress for his funeral.

Our decays are as much the work of nature, as the first principles of our being. We die as fast as we live. Every moment subtracts from our duration on earth, as much as it adds to it.

A little while is enough to view the world in; nature treads in a circle, and has much the same face through the whole course of eternity. Live well, and make virtue thy guide; and then, let death come sooner or later, it matters not.

When Socrates was told by a friend, that the judges had sentenced him to death-" And hath not nature," said he, "passed the same sentence upon them?”

"Death-bed charities," says Dr. Sherlock, "are too like a death-bed repentance: men seem to give their estates to God and the poor, just as they part from their sins, when they can keep them no longer."

We need not care how short our passage out of this life is, so it be safe; never any traveller complained that he came too soon to his journey's end.

Cardinal Wolsey poured forth his soul in these sad words" Had I been as diligent to serve my God, as I have been to please my king, He would not have forsaken me now in my grey hairs."

Cardinal Mazarin having made religion wholly subservient to his secular interest, discoursing one day with a Sorbonne Doctor concerning the immortality of the soul, and a man's eternal state, said, weeping, "Oh, my poor soul! whither wilt thou go?” And afterwards seeing the Queen-mother, said to her, "Madam, your favours undid me; and were I to live my time again, I would be a capuchin rather than a courtier."

Sir Philip Sidney left this as his last farewell among his acquaintance: "Govern your will and affections by the will and word of your Creator in me behold the end of this world, and all its vanities."

It is said, when the prince of the Latin poets was