often said is often true—he dies without the last Sacraments.
Some men do not like talking about death. Nobody dies of it. But it is ominous to some minds, like a winding-sheet in the candle, or the death-watch. They do not really believe these things, nevertheless they feel an unreasonable awe. They shrink from making their will. They have it in their room ready for signature. They put off signing it to to-morrow and to the next day, and at last they bequeath loss to the Church and trouble to everybody by dying intestate. Such are the freaks of the human spirit. A good man will not so fear death, and a wise man will often speak of it. Joseph of Arimathæa made his tomb in his garden, where he saw it day by day. S. Charles talked of his death continually. If we did so it would become a familiar and kindly thought, like rest after toil, and home after peril by land or by sea. We should be kept by the fear of death from resisting or grieving the Holy Ghost by any willing acts of variance with His will, and we should be trained by the thought of death to understand the words, Cupio dissolvi et esse cum Christo.[1] Mihi vivere Christus, mori lucrum.[2] Scio enim, cui credidi, et certus sum,
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