Job, "have been swifter than a post: they have passed by as ships carrying fruits." (Job ix. 25) The ships signify the lives of men, which soon pass away, and run speedily to death; and if men have laboured only to provide themselves with earthly goods, these fruits decay at the hour of death: we can bring none of them with us to the other world. We, says St. Ambrose, falsely call these things our property, which we cannot bring with us to eternity, where we must live for ever, and where virtue alone will accompany us. "Non nostra sunt, quæ non possumus auferre nobiscum: sola virtus nos comitatur." You, says St. Augustine, attend only to what a rich man possessed; but tell me, which of his possessions shall he, now that he is on the point of death, be able to take with him? ” Quid hie habebat attendis, quid secum fert, atteudo ?" (Serm. xiii. de Adv. Dom.) The rich bring with them a miserable garment, which shall rot with them in the grave. And should they, during life, have acquired a great name, they shall be soon forgotten. ” Their memory hath perished with a noise." (Ps. ix. 7.)
5. Oh! that men would keep before their eyes that great maxim of Jesus Christ ” What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul ?" (Matt. xvi. 26.) If they did, they should certainly cease to love the world. What shall it profit them at the hour of death to have acquired all the goods of this world, if their souls must go into hell to be in torments for all eternity? How many has this maxim, sent into the cloister and into the desert? How many martyrs has it encouraged to embrace torments and death! In the history of England, we read of thirty kings and queens, who left the world and became religious, in order to secure a happy death. The consideration of the vanity of earthly goods made St. Francis Borgia retire from the world. At the sight of the Empress Isabella, who had died in the flower of youth, he came to the resolution of serving God alone. "Is such, then," he said, ” the end of all the grandeur and crowns of this world? Henceforth I will serve a master who can never die." The day of death is called ” the day of destruction" ("The day of destruction is at
