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Rh THIRD SERMON.

HOW TO MAKE THE THOUGHT OF DEATH USEFUL.

Subject.

For the thought of death to be useful in helping us to lead good lives it must be serious and apt to influence our future actions.—Preached on the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

Text.

Ecce homo quidam hydropicus erat ante illum.—Luke xiv. 2.

"Behold there was a certain man before him that had the dropsy."

Introduction.

In the Gospel of last Sunday we have seen how, when Our Lord was approaching, "a dead man was carried out;" in to-day's Gospel we read that "there was a certain man before him that had the dropsy;" this man was dangerously ill, and would certainly have died had not Our Lord cured him. Here again, my dear brethren, we have a warning that we must die, a sermon and an exhortation to think often of death. In my last exhortation I showed you how the frequent meditation of death is a powerful means to induce us to avoid sin and practise virtue; the Gospel of to-day furnishes me with another opportunity of treating of the same matter, which cannot be sufficiently insisted on, and of showing in what manner we may derive advantage from the frequent meditation of death.

Plan of Discourse.

''We must think of death seriously, and in such a way that the thought may influence our future actions. Such is the whole subject of this instruction. The plan of discourse will be made clearer as we go on.''

Do Thou, God of goodness, give us Thy light through the merits of Mary and of our holy guardian angels.

If any hap-hazard thought of death that may occur to us could inspire us to lead holy lives there would be hardly one man in the world who would not live piously, and there would be no ne-