sincerely and amend in time. Say to yourselves: alas! unhappy me! if I am but a moment too late with my conversion! Therefore I will delay no longer; I have waited only too long already! Now I will begin, O Lord! with Thy help and grace, that during the rest of my life I may serve Thee truly, and die a happy death. Amen.
On Deferring Repentance to a Future Time, see the preceding Third Part.
THIRTEENTH SERMON.
ON THE UNHAPPY DEATH OF THE WICKED.
Subject.
The death of the sinner is full of misery, without help or consolation, 1. from creatures, 2. from God.—Preached on the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost.
Text.
Filia mea modo defuncta est.—Matt. ix. 18.
“My daughter is even now dead.”
Introduction.
Who would have thought that this maiden should have been hurried off so soon by death in the bloom of youth? Certainly neither her father nor she herself would have imagined such a thing; and yet she died. So true are the words: “At what hour you think not the Son of man will come.”[1] He will come when we least expect, to take us out of this world. Yet this death was in some respects consoling for the father and fortunate for the innocent daughter; consoling for him, because he had at hand Christ the Son of God, from whom he might seek help and comfort; fortunate for the daughter, because she was immediately raised from the dead by the same Son of God and restored to life; and even if she had not been restored to life, her death would have been a happy one, since she departed in her first innocence with a conscience at peace with God. My dear brethren, the death of the just, whether it comes early or late, suddenly or slowly, foreseen or unforeseen, is always a consoling and happy
- ↑ Quia qua hora non putatis, Filius hominis veniet.—Luke xii. 40.
