Section I. The Four Last Things

The feelings of Balaam on the rocky heights of Moab, when he cried out, " Who can count the dust of Jacoh, and know the numher of the stock of Israel? Let my soul die the death of the just, and my last end be like to them." S. Ignatius rule to do everything, as we should wish we had done it, when we come to die. Deceitful glimmering twilight of the world; death the dawn, the sweet aurora of eternity; the light which then streams in upon the soul.

I. The difference which the light of the deathbed causes in our judgment of things.

1. The extreme difficulty in life and health of realising the soul, and looking at it apart and separate in the multitude of sensible objects: even good men feel this; such is the bewildering multiplicity of the world, and its al most countless beautiful distractions.

2. The exaggerated value we set on earthly objects, or, which is the snare of holy souls, on doing good on earth; we are so beset with the present that we cannot get to see God s side of the question.

3. The difficulty of bringing home to ourselves how hard it is to save our souls; we cannot get the solitude and silence required for realising this: we really make far too light of this, and acquiesce in much lower views than we think: what if the number of the elect be so small, as the words of our Lord, and as the views of many saints and theolo gians would make it?

4. Death gradually, as bodily weakness increases, and self-love ebbs out, unveils the Great Eternal God^ His interests, claims, views of us, &c. &c.

II. We have all to die; it is not a something which happens to this man, and not to that, but to all: the last illness of a good man.

1. Its beginning slight symptoms no prog nostics of its fatal ending the devils prepare for the fight so does the guardian angel Mary prays all is preluding in the invisible world.

2. News of his danger sorrow of those who love him his own dispositions perhaps not instantaneous calmness trembling in the sight of God s judgments his view of how much goes to the salvation of a soul.

3. The last Sacraments Confession Viaticum Extreme Unction Plenary Indulgence as if earth had done, and could do no more; all is to be supernatural.

4. Aspirations for death the fortitude he has received in the Sacraments gleams out thus danger of presumption effort to calm him self earthly thoughts put away, the world is going on around him as usual, he heeds it not, and it heeds not him it is God s hour all is supernatural the world has done with him.

5. The last temptations he enters into his eclipse: now Mary, Saints, Angels come to his aid despair, presumption, desire to get well, scruples: peace restored.

6. The last breath describe the agony life s energies are rallied to die the soul sits on the lips look! it has gone. That thing on the bed is not a man whither has he gone?

BAD DEATHS OF THOSE WHO HAVE ONCE BEEN GOOD.

If the material world is beautiful for its wisdom and its power, the spiritual world is yet more beautiful for its mercy and its compassion; but there are some mysterious apparent exceptions to this universal rule of mercy, which are full of doubt and fear, and which we must not omit to study. We shall be least safe from their happening to ourselves, if we wilfully refuse to consider them. The bad deaths of those who have once been good, and good for the greater part of their lives; the opposite of deathbed salvation. I. Considerations en the phenomenon.

1. Our eternity depends on the state in which we are when we die death, fixes it had life with good death is secure good life with had death is perdition.

2. Thus the hour of death, its time, manner and circumstances, is one of the most, or positively the most decisive of (rod s provi dences over us.

3. As to whether such deaths are common, we are left in uneasy ignorance.

4. It is curious that wisdom was the gift of some of the most startling instances, Solo mon, Origen, Tertullian, Hosius.

5. We are to pass the time of our sojourning here in fear.

6. The fearful mystery involved in so dire a dispensation.

7. It does not seem to happen to those who are devoted to Mary.

8. There are three classes to whom it does happen:

9. Either those who have heen really good, and have not persevered.

10. Or those who have heen in delusions all along.

11. Or those who have got into a rut of slovenliness and tepidity, and so cannot fight through the last hours.

II. The roots and origins of this awful visitation.

1. Carelessness ahout little things.

2. A spirit of selftrust, and a want of self-knowledge.

3. A habit of criticising others.

4. Want of special prayer for the gift of perseverance.

5. Some secret fault, like Judas.

6. A hidden covetousness, which is idolatry.

7. A habit of, taking our own advice and opinion.

8. Absence of works of mercy to others.

9. A want of being thoroughly sincere with God.

Oh, how manifold and inscrutable are the clouds which are round about the judgment seat of God! When I look on this dispensation of an evil death, my head turns dizzy with the thick close darkness into which I look. It is fearful that all things should depend on one. It must be a strong rope at the end of which all eternity is to hang, and it shall not break. Whether any of us shall die such a dog s death, I know not; but I know that if we do, it will be our own fault, and only ours; and I know, moreover, that if we do not take pains, and great pains, and persevering pains, there will be fearful darkness round us in that hour when we shall most need light.

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THE PARTICULAR JUDGMENT.

We have come to the shore of eternity what will it be like? what sounds shall we hear? what will he the first sight to meet our eyes? the looks of dying people the look that comes after death who shall unlock the secret of those looks? all depends on our living so that that moment should not take us hy surprise. I. The last hum of worldly sound passing from our ears: the act of death probably not very painful. IT. The disembodied soul the world, the flesh fall off it sees plainly its acts of renunciation of any venial sin it may have upon it unremitted this act not meritorious.

III. Judgment. Into whose hands does it fall? Who is judge?

1. Would it not seem awful to be judged by God? Through His mercy we are not judged by God as God; though He who judges us be God.

2. Could we trust a fellow creature? almost not even if God allowed it.

3. To the beautiful Human Soul of Jesus is this judicial pow r er given. joy and consolation!

IV. The act of judgment: Jesus comes not down nor is the soul caught up to His corporal presence; it is raised to Him intellectually: He flashes a light upon it reveals all sins, motives, inexcusableness, &c. Guardian Angel and Tempter waiting.

1. The soul sees the discussion.

2. Hears the sentence.

3. Thrilling awfulness of its instantaneity: no time to explain, or to set matters right not even the delay of colloquy, as at the Universal Judgment.

4. The sentence, irrevocable and fixed, rushes upon the soul; now at last the creature is in the hands of the Creator no medium, no go-between, no world, no distractions: the tingling silentness of eternity all round.

V. This is actually to happen to each one of us here present; stay! let us realise that for a moment.

VI. The sentence! what was it? what will it be? Listen can you not fancy you hear the dear, dread, most dread yet most dear sound of the voice of Mary s Son, like His Mother s voice, penetrating the depths of the clear soul? Jesus! what wilt Thou say? what will it be? He is there in the tabernacle! He knows! He might speak if He would! But He keeps it to Himself! His Blessed Mouth is there but His Lips are closed.

Jesus! For Thy sweet Mother s sake, speak gentle things to our poor frightened souls in that tremendous hour!

3G6 PART VII.

IY. ETERNITY.

I believe in the life everlasting. Amen.

I. Picture of life; all classes living, scheming, building, planning, as if all was to go.on the same without end. An Angel comes down, stands on the shore of the sea pro claims, No more time! startled horror of people! then what begins? Nothing begins. We fall into the dreadful arms of eternity, which never did begin, as if we fell off from the round world into space.

II. What this proclamation imports to us, who are used habitually to time, now time is to be no more.

1. Time in a material sense, no clocks, no bells, hours, days, nights, seasons; all still and stationary for evermore.

2. Time for pleasure in earthly things.

3. Time for meriting.

4. Time for repenting.

III. Let us walk through London: what will become of all these people? they will live for ever! But Father! they never think of God! Live for ever! What will life be like when time will be no more? We are so used to time, what can we do without it? it is like air to us, or like water to a fish. Yet an Angel drives us out of it, into what? awful! what is this new thing? this eternity? we do not know. True! our ignorance is more awful still: but are we ready? are we getting ready? are we going to get ready? If we slept our last sleep tonight, when and where would our awakening be?

IY. But this eternity! souls still live, oh yes! live for ever! The builders of the Tower of Babel, all those the flood drowned are alive, fearfully alive, fearfully strong! Those of Sodom and Gomorrah, whom the fire licked up like the tongue of a cruel beast those that crucified our Lord your own ancestors all of the last five thousand years. Did you see your father or your mother die? They are alive still. And we must, mnst, must live for ever! this day one hundred thousand million years hence we shall be strong, fresh, immortal, so immortal that fire cannot kill us, blaze it ever so cruelly.

V. But this eternity what is it? It moves not, all else moves.

1. We die survivors go on journeys, eat, sleep, wake, change, we, if we are lost, burn: at every change and every turn we are fixed somewhere and doing something Oh my God! that we could be sure it was not living in fire!

2. We cannot perish, even torture cannot consume us. All, all in eternity is irrevocable.

3. How can we bring this home to ourselves?

Drops of water, grains of sand, leaves of trees, pulses of men.

4. And then it ends? Oh no! it is only beginning Oh poor damned so uls! could we not almost pity them? and our own rela tions, our sister s eyes, our child s voice,- our mother that hore us, and the father that toiled for us, perhaps!

5. Imagine endurance of pain, hot coals, or quick lime in the eye, spikes under the nails, for a million years!

6. And each moment is all eternity at once, like the pressure of a weight.

VI. But really, really will it never end? Hush! let us speak gently, it is such a dreadful thing to say! Can we get at God? Where is He? Can we touch Him? Can we hold Him fast? Can we tie Him on His throne? Hush! let us speak lower. Can we kill Him? Oh, my God! that we should utter the words! then, then there might be a chance of ending eternity!

VII. Good God! what shall we do? We cannot get out of the way of eternity: we cannot turn the corner of it. My Jesus! where shall we flee? No wonder sinners at the day of doom will call on the mountains to fall on them what shall we do? Make friends with eternity! Oh, then, that God would send us an angel to tell us on what eternity, a good eternity, depends. See! the heavens open: it is not an angel. Hear! a voice! not of an angel but of the crucified God. He tells us a good confession! Once more let us go to the damned and learn they would give all the world for five minutes at the feet of a priest! Now count up the sins of your past life look at that damned soul how it struggles oh, how sick it is with fire how the flames roar through that crowded dun geon. See! how it tosses and bounds! what convulsions oh, horrible! Then will you make up your minds that you will not go to hell? Lift up your hands, in the name of God! lift up your hands, all ye who will not go to hell now on your knees look at the crucifix now say with me aloud Oh, Jesus, mercy! now again once more, louder, from your hearts Oh, Jesus, mercy! VIII. Dearest children! God bless your good resolutions! Oh this eternity is a tremendous thing. I wonder people do not faint when they think of it. Soon, soon shall we set sail upon that boundless sea we know not how soon it may be this very night! It is no fairy tale, it concerns both you and me. Each of us is to be either an angel or a devil, either saved or damned; on rolls the wheel of time; death steals on with a dreadful swiftness, and then bounds upon us, like the going of a train upon the railway; nearer still and nearer does it come. It is not a long work to die, it is not a hard thing to die, albeit a little painful, and tight, and

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cold, and suffocating; and when, my dear Brethren, it is past, what and where shall we be? aye what and where shall we be when the day has come and gone, and all is still fixed wonderful eternal?

THE MISTAKE FOUND OUT TOO LATE.

The difference between putting ourselves into the position of our Lord s mysteries, at which we never can assist, and into positions where one day we most infallibly shall be, as death and judgment. Well! now I will suppose what is really going on somewhere while I speak.

I. Life over plans at an end the illness the agony all is over. This must come to every one of us, good or bad there is no exception: we are judged, and sentence is passed, one of eternal condemnation; this too may happen to all of us, and will, unless we are careful.

II. There we stand where we were judged: our feelings.

1. Death is over it was not so very bad to bear however, it is over, and will never come again.

2. Surprise it has all come so suddenly, things are so odd and strange, is it really all over? and have I seen Jesus, and the Angels, and the devil?

3. Without my body, such immense power, such ability to feel things, pleasure or pain, so intensely. Now I realise what I am of myself: I can do well without my body; what wonderful life, what terrible life there is in my soul: death could do nothing to it.

4. Without creatures, awful silence, breath less wilderness, not a sound, not a friend, not a creature, stripped of all, and fallen just as I am into the hands of God. All I lived for has left me, or I have left it: it matters not which. I could not have believed it. It is terrible: people on earth never could believe it: it could not be explained to them.

5. I have seen Jesus too, the Babe, the Boy, the Man, the Blessed Sacrament. Oh! it was most beautiful and I have seen Him speak. I wish I could see Him at my ease, not all trembling as I naturally was at judgment I have seen Him however, but all is vain. It was of no good to me. I must try to be calm, if I can, but this is unutterable: I have only seen Him to be condemned: condemned, what do I mean by condemned when I say it?

6. What then really are my prospects? Fire, pain, agony, imprisonment, tyranny of devils, to go on fathoming unfathomable depths of pain, and find no bottom in them to all

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eternity. Well! I must make up my mind to it! No! but I can t. Oh God! Jesus! come back again just for one moment I have one word to say. No! all is silent, more silent than the grave.

7. Change of views about 1. Sacraments, 2. Pleasures, 3. Penance, 4. Prayer, 5. Lukewarmness leading to mortal sin. Good heavens! why did I not see this before? Why say, good heavens! There are none for me!

8. Novelty of despair What is this new feeling coming on me, a new kind of life? Oh, dreadful! I feel it stealing first into one faculty, then another, it is mastering me, hope is going out of me. Oh! death was nothing to this; for ever, for ever, for ever! It cannot be. I can t live this life. It will crush me to pieces Oh! how strong it is!

Every moment some one is in this predicament, which is as common as a man digging in a field, or whistling in the road, as a clock striking, as a train starting; our turn for this risk must come.- -We do not know when; and nobody is sure of coming safe out of it. If this does not make us religious, what will?

THE JUDGMENT OF THE EEPEOBATE.

I. There is an end of the world to each of us in our own death and immediate judgment.

1. The uncertainty of the time, hut the certainty that it must be very soon.

2. Very likely we shall have no warning, or an insufficient one.

3. All that is involved in passing out of time into eternity.

4. The startling indifference and practical un belief of men.

5. The tremendous reality they will fall into all at once.

II. The judgment of a worldly man may be taken as an illustration. Interest of it daily is it acted in substance.

1. Our Lord s inquiry concerning

2. The greatness of His Passion. 2. Works of mercy. 3. Sins of commission. 4. Sins of omission. 5. Bad thoughts and purposes. 6. Idle words. 7. Temporal goods. 8. Relative duties. 9. Use of time.

3. The accusers.

4. Conscience with its clear view of sins, and of the corruption of motives heretofore secret even to itself.

5. The devil with unspeakable ability, and desperate malice.

6. Place and accomplice as it were appearing against us.

7. The witnesses.

8. The Creator. 2. Guardian Angel. 3. Stain of sin visible on the soul.

9. The assessors.

10. The Apostles. 2. Martyrs. 3. Patriarchs and Prophets. 4. The voluntarily poor.

11. The executioners.

12. St. Michael directing demons to torture. 2. Demons torturing. 3. Heavenly spirits applauding. 4. Instruments of torture, fire, cold, &c., created expressly for torture.

13. Intolerable sentence.

14. Bitterness of pains, mental and bodily. 2. Their variety. 3. Continuity. 4. Eternity.

III. Differences of this from the particular judgment.

1. The soul knows its fate beforehand, and so has no hope: thus it is an execution rather than a judgment.

2. The unutterableness of the pains.

3. Increase of pains from union with the body.

4. All the publicity of it.

5. We shall see it.

What will be our fate then? what our share of that pomp? Should not this thought colour all our lives? We resemble men in prison waiting for trial; the issue is uncertain, because our guilt is clear, and mercy not quite so sure. This is a picture of our condition; we should think of nothing but our trial.

VII. THE LOSS OF GOD.

Forgive me if I pain you very much this morning. Bear with me, peace will come out of it. Suppose Jesus has not spoken gently to the dis embodied soul, what comes of it? Let us follow it on. Heaven is closed, Jesus gone, vanished; but the terrific sound of the Voice of Mary s Son rings through the depths of the lost soul lost, lost, eternally! misery! misery! what has it gained? fire! what has it lost? God!

I. How many of the two millions and more in

London live without God in the world; yet what is the end?

1. Picture of hell at this very hour existing, active, full of life, while we are here!

2. The inexorableness of God s Majesty, while the cries of lost souls rise up clamorously before Him it simply glorifies Him proof of the intensity of His hatred of sin.

3. This is the destiny of those who lose God.

II. View of the pain of loss.

1. The instant the soul is disengaged from the body, it has a terrific attraction towards God through the radical love it has for Him, and the exceeding sweetness and beauty of the Divinity.

2. The efforts it makes.

3. In rage, it would fain murder God and destroy Him.

4. In agony, it would fain suffocate its own interior thirst for God.

5. In fury, it would fain break its tight fetters of gnawing fire.

6. The state of the lost soul in this respect.

7. It lives a horrible life in the simultaneous commingling of the three effects just named.

8. Its imprecations against God, Whom it is powerless to hurt.

9. Its writhing under the sense of its being its own executioner.

10. The sickening overwhelming sense of all being eternal.

11. The four views which it continually takes of its own state.

12. The union of all the pains of sense with this vast central pain of loss.

13. Its view of the graces it has received.

14. Its view of the grandeur of the bliss it has lost.

15. When it seeks God it meets terrors it cries, where is God? and it embraces keen flames; where is God? and it meets hideous demons; where is God? and it dashes into an affrighted crowd of damned souls.

Think, 1. One mortal sin can send us there. 2. Venial sin and tepidity dispose us thither. 3. We ought to be there at this moment. 4. Many are there at this hour who have sinned less than we. O the beauty, the beauty, the ravishing beauty of God! One sunbeam of His beauty falling athwart the outer darkness of that land of everlasting curse, and it would be lit up into a paradise of peace and a home of joy! Beauty! 0. uncreated Beauty! show Thyself, show Thyself but ever so little to our poor hearts, that they may leap forward with longing love, and unite themselves eternally to Thee!

WHY OUR BLESSED LORD SAID SO LITTLE ABOUT HEAVEN.

Exiles love to talk of home friends who part of the home where they shall meet those who love each other of the joys they have prepared for those they love. Why does our Lord say so little about heaven? It seems as if His disciples so needed it, and it would have cheered them so much.

I. That we might love Him for His own sake.

He was jealous lest the very beauty of His rewards should steal our hearts from the pure love of His own beauty.

II. Because it is simply He Who will make the immense delight of heaven.

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III. That we might reach higher in heaven by loving more disinterestedly.

IV. Because the joys of heaven are so surpassing, that our present understanding is not capable of comprehending them.

V. Because we should scarcely have been able to believe it. It would have been a standing temptation against faith, especially when we considered our own unworthiness. I recommend meditation on the joys of heaven, because of the encroachments of worldliness upon our spirits in these times. I do not tell you to forget hell. no! from time to time, my Brethren, feed on those fires, till your blood is cold and your flesh trembles. You, I think, run less risks than many others, but the mere chance of going there is enough to make us tremble. But for once you think of hell, think ten times of the bright heaven which your Father has prepared for you. Each one s place is ready at this hour your name is fixed to it the angels pass it by they admire its beauty and its joys but they think of the beautiful throne which was ready for Satan, but on which he never sat, and where St. Joseph, or the Baptist, or St. Peter perhaps is sitting now and each time they pass your own beautiful home in heaven, they tremble lest you should never come to live there, and they breathe a sweet prayer that you may persevere!

ENTER THOU INTO THE JOY OF THY LORD.

The Christian lies upon his deathbed sacra ments over his strength ehhing with full consciousness, facing eternity all his good disap pears from his eyes the Passion of Jesus grows now the great mercy of God is all he sees the end he is too weak to suffer much he wakes, oh, with such a new freshness of awakening it is the vigour, and the health, and the alacrity of immortality angels singing the Face of Jesus wearing such a smile the words, Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. This has happened to more than one since Mass began.

I. His feelings

1. Of surprise at such a salvation for so little a service. Lord, when saw we Thee hungry? &c. he argues against himself.

2. Of jubilee at the first feeling of eternity, so new, so strange, so surpassing a thing.

3. Of extasy at the new raptures of love of God, which fill his soul.

II. I see three crowds of souls to whom this sweet word is daily being said daily, while the sun climbs and descends the sky, and we do our ordinary actions.

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1. Those who are in love with God, and though with many faults, have no taste hut for Him, and have laid up their treasure in His love.

2. Those who from a sense of duty do their ordinary actions for Him, correspond on the whole to His grace, and persevere in their spiritual exercises.

3. Those who have suffered much, and, though complaining, have heen patient and obedient to His will, and to His stripping them of the joys of earth.

How beautiful is life when it is the way to God! How sweet is death when it is the gate of heaven! How welcome to us the thought that Jesus is occupied so many times a day in saying that glorious word, Well done! How welcome too the thought that there is a thrill of love in His Heart this hour, in thinking of the time when He will say to each one of us, Well done! Conclusion.

1. You sorrow, and you seem to murmur, and not to bear it well yet you w-ish to bear it well your honest wish will do you shall one day hear that word, Well done!

2. You are in temptation seem overwhelmed hardly know if you have resisted, but you mean to resist you are trying to resist you too shall one day hear that word, Well done!

3. You have fallen, fallen back into sin, dearest souls, souls whom Jesus died for be of good cheer have faith. Do you not sorrow? would you not it were otherwise? in hum-blest dependence upon grace, do you not fully purpose now to sin no more? then lo! the angels are singing over you in heaven even now you too shall one day hear that word, Well done!

0, my Brethren, my Brethren! you who love Jesus with a true love, however poor a love, listen to my words, do not fear to die, you will find it very easy and very sweet do not fear the judgment, you will find it very gentle, very kindly, very safe!

WE WITH JESUS AFTERWARDS.

Some day the sun will rise on London: the Lent exercises will be going on, the Exposition in some church, and we no longer there; a hundred years ago we may have passed away; nay, a day will come when there will be no London; all, all will be done away, and God be all in all where shall we be then? that day will soon be here the end of a boy s holiday seems to be close on its beginning where shall we be? Hope whispers, with Jesus! if it be so, how little hard will strictness seem! how we shall joy that we have been generous with God on earth! Now let us talk of Heaven.

I. God knew and loved us from all eternity: Heaven is the end and satisfaction of that love. What manner of place it must be, if God made it for this. St. Paul says, " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,.neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what things God hath prepared for them that love Him."

II. The beauty and wonderfulness of creation;

the Incarnation would have taken place if there had been no sin.

1. The silence of eternity broken because of it.

2. How it rises stones plants animals men elect saints angels Mary the apex of all creation the Sacred Humanity, which touches God.

3. Heaven the crown of it all; the treasure-house of its beauty and its sanctity.

III. The wondrousness of the mystery of the Incarnation, as a remedy for sin.

1. God still could not resist His thirst to share in His own creation, by assuming a created nature.

2. All redemption was 1. to redeem Mary, 2. to redeem us to fill heaven.

IV. Heaven a home for Mary.

1. The love of the Most Holy Trinity for her.

2. The Divine Maternity.

3. The ravishing beauty of her sinlessness.

V. Heaven the court of the Sacred Humanity:

the same Heaven as ours.

1. The beauty of it because of His merits.

2. The magnificence of the Sacred Heart there.

VI. The place of the disclosure of the Vision of the Omnipresent God our heaven.

1. Beauty peace joy love wisdom unchangeahleness eternity.

2. Weary yourself with picturing and wishing it is unspeakably more than all that.

3. The gifts of the glorified body pleasures of the pure senses, how sublime they are.

4. The power, wisdom and love of the glorified soul.

There are souls there this hour that love us dearly the saints worshipping there the angels at their melody Mary on her throne exercising the magnificence of her sweet Queendom there Creation s crown and end and gem and miracle and unspeakably divine beauty, the Sacred Humanity is there the Voice is heard that cried in Bethlehem, and that preached upon the mountain, and by the well, and that strove for us in the anguish-trembling accents of mysterious prayer what is that Voice saying now? And there too is the Eternal Show, the Vision of Visions, gleaming with its countless lights, pouring out floods of exultation from its nameless burning splendours into angels and men, beautiful beyond all dreams, so beautiful that he who sees it cannot sin. Sancta Trinitas, Unus Deus, miserere nolis.

PART SEVENTH.