hour, easily witness; and it is-the death-bed of a sinner.

He is lying, let us say, in a good house, with good attendance; with everything in the way of earthly comfort that his soul desires. I have no wish, you will perceive, my Brethren, to overdraw my picture, to exaggerate a single figure or a single colour in it all. And so, in describing a sinner's death, I do not go to the region of Bull-lane for a specimen, but take my instance from any place you please where the respectable people of the world reside. Neither do I select any Protestant sinner, whose conveniently generous faith made abstinence from sin difficult in proportion as it made forgiveness of sin easy; but I take a Catholic, who sinned constantly on and on, though knowing well that forgiveness of even a single sin was not to be had without much difficulty, never to be had without some uncertainty, and that every additional crime committed by him made his chance of salvation still smaller and still more precarious. Our dying sinner, then, Catholic and respectable, is lying in comfort, his eyes looking up to a well-wrought ceiling, and to some other things, too, very far beyond it. All care is taken to celebrate his departure from life with all appropriate respectable solemnity. The children are kept away, lest their foolish prattle and still more foolish wailing should disturb the mind of the stricken man; the attendants speak in whispers; the friends, with still higher perceptions of propriety than the attendants,

hardly speak at all; some monster, invisible, but fearful, is known to be working on the patient in the bed, and, with the monster's terrible work even the boldest does not dare to intermeddle; thick carpets within and thick tan without bring about the house the awful anticipated stillness of the judgment-hall and the grave. Glasses are removed, curtains are set aright, anxious glances are momentarily directed to the pale, motionless, rigid face; messages are given, messages are brought-all in a great hush of noiselessness-and still the stricken man stares on, stares on at the well-wrought ceiling, and at these other things, too, so far beyond it. But a ring at the door is heard. The doctor is announced; he is come to pay his accustomed visit-this will be his last-to the man who will so soon pass over into other hands. That quiet, searching eye of his soon sees all; he knows that the end is near. And so, doing his duty faithfully to the last, he tries to awaken his patient's attention; whispers to him to be a man; not to be afraid; to arm himself for the last inevitable fight; but, at all events, to be persuaded that, before the clock has gone ten minutes longer, that bond of life will have been broken, which no skill of science can tie again. And then, in a great hurry, the priest is sent for. And the priest comes.

And

he, too, does his duty faithfully. But the glaring eyes still look only to the ceiling, and to those other things so far beyond it. And the priest thinks with terror of that awful saying, never rightly realized

till death comes to drive its meaning home-as a man lives, so shall he die, but prays hard and fast for the poor sinner before him, whom he has known as a bad, careless Catholic, and whom he now knows to be insensible. But what are priests' prayers against the passionless, unswerving, overwhelming power of the Divine Revenge! And so the priest shudders as he hears ringing in his soul-"I, too, will laugh at their destruction, and mock when that comes which they fear;" and he seems to be aware of troops of devils, rushing in joyously, singing their songs of triumph, that at last their work is done, the siege is over, the last danger of disappointment vanished, and the poor foolish city that feared nothing, cared for nothing, given up to fire and pillage and desolation. But our respectable, sinful, dying Catholic-insensible is he, did I say? Yes, I said it; but death is not going to be cheated thus. It will work its wild will upon our sinner; it will hit him hard through his very soul; and, to do that well, it will quicken him, and brighten him, and concentrate him, and intensify him, till he sees, fully and clearly, what he often saw, whether he would or not, but only in little, merciful glimpses, before, what, when he saw, he heeded not, or even spoke of as foolish fancies—the judgment-seat and the Judge; the guardian angel, with not a word of defence to say, but hiding the shame of his failure in the mantle of the Judge; the accusing devil, unfailing in memory, unrelenting in tongue; the impatient roar of hell's fires surging up from below;

the impatient anger of heaven's saints crying out from above; the Judge's hand raised and the Judge's lips moving in a sentence which is also a malediction; the opening of the brazen gates; their shutting fixed and fast; the long, victorious cheer around the halls of hell; the chaining down in the fated spot; the hideous face of the torturing devil; the worm that never dies; the fire that is never extinguished; the smoke of his torment ascending for ever and ever! All these our dying sinner now sees beyond the well-wrought ceiling; leaps up in despairing terror-horror in his eyes, horror in his hands, a deeper deep of horror in his soul. And then the limbs quiver, and thejaws drop, and the eyes glaze, and the teeth clench, and the hands fall. Come away, grey-haired wife! come away, golden-haired daughter! the poor face that ye are still kissing belongs to one who, even now, is beneath your feet, to curse God and to curse you as long as hell shall burn under the breath of the Divine Revenge!

III.

DEATH THE LIBERATOR.

"And one of the ancients answered and said to me: Who are these that are clothed in white robes, and whence are they come? And I said to him: My Lord, thou knowest. And he said to me: These are they who are come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in the temple, and He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell over them. They shall not hunger nor thirst any more, neither shall the sun fall on them nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall rule them, and shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."— APOCALYPSE, vii. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.

My Brethren, it will be in the memory of some here present, that on last evening I spoke a little about death in general, and a little, too, about a sinner's death in particular. And my words, especially upon that latter subject were, I have been told, very hard and very bitter; by some, I believe, they were considered unfair. Now, the case I took was an ideal case. It was, I admit, an extreme case too. And I am justified in demanding that its being both ideal