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 are resolved not to leave him. If he looks back into his past life, to seek for some good works, to oppose to this army of sins; alas! he finds the good that he has done has been so inconsiderable, so insignificant, as to give him no hopes of its weighing down the scales, when balanced with his multiplied crimes. His very prayers, the confessions and communions which he has made, fly now in his face, and upbraid him with his wretched negligence, and his sacrilegious abuse of these great means of salvation. The sight of all things about him, his wife, his children, his friends, his worldly goods, which he has loved more than his God, serve for nothing now but to increase his anguish. And what is his greatest misery is, that the agonies of his sickness give him little or no leisure or ability to apply himself seriously to the greatest and most difficult of all concerns, which is, a perfect conversion to God after a long habit of sin. Oh! how truly may the sinner now repeat those words of the Psalmist: the sorrows of death have encompassed me, and the perils of hell have found me: Psalm cxiv. 3. Oh! what unspeakable anguish must it be to see himself just embarking upon eternity, an infinite and endless duration, an immense ocean, to whose further shore the poor sailor can never reach; and to have so much reason to fear, it will be to him an eternity of woe.

4. Consider, my soul, what thy sentiments will be at the hour of thy death, with relation to the service of God, to virtue and devotion: how lovely then will the way of virtue appear to thee! How wilt thou then wish to have followed that charming path! Oh! what a satisfaction is it to a dying man to have lived well! What a comfort to see himself now at the end of all his labours and dangers; to find himself at the gates of eternal rest, of everlasting peace, after a long and doubtful