act, think in that manner? Would I listen to that talk, look at that object? Would I permit that person to act as he does? And if I should, at the hour of death, wish to have acted in a certain way, let me choose that way now. Perhaps death is actually very near me. If I were now about to die, would I not wish that the action I intend doing, the work I am engaged on, the devotion I am practising were done well and zealously? Would I not wish to have borne this trial, poverty, illness, and tribulation patiently for God’s sake? Truly I would! Therefore I will do so now and suffer resignedly and with Christian fortitude. O happy man who has death daily before his eyes! He belongs to the number of those faithful servants of whom Our Lord has said in the Gospel: “Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching.”[1] Let us all, then, in future, think and act accordingly. Amen.
FOURTH SERMON.
ON PREPARING CAREFULLY FOR DEATH.
Subject.
For a long time beforehand, nay, all the time of our lives, we should prepare for the approach of death. This is required by the importance of the business that has to be transacted in death.—Preached on the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text.
Obsecro itaque vos,…ut digne ambuletis vocatione qua vocati estis.—Eph. iv. 1 (from to-day’s Epistle).
“I therefore beseech you…that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called.”
Introduction.
In to-day’s Epistle the holy Apostle St. Paul exhorts his Christians of Ephesus to persevere in the way of virtue, so that their lives may be consistent with the holiness of the Christian faith, to which they were called by God. The same exhortation serves for all of us to-day, for, in preference to many nations, we have received from the infinite goodness of God the great grace
- ↑ Beati servi illi, quos, cum venerit Dominus, invenerit vigilantes.—Luke xii. 37.
