hat child, was a stolen one. And even
as simple is the state of our dread of God, of our wish to keep his
name and his thought away from us. It is the sure sign that our
pleasures are stolen, either as being wrong in themselves, or much
oftener, because we have taken them without being fit for them, have
snatched them for ourselves, instead of receiving them at the hands of
God. Two of us may be daily doing the very same thing in most
respects,--enjoying actually the very same pleasures, whether of body or
of mind; the same exercises, the same studies, the same indulgences, the
same society,--and yet these very same things may belong rightfully to
the one, and be stolen by the other. To the one they may come with a
double blessing, as the assurance of God's greater love hereafter: to
the other, they are but an addition to that sad account, when all good
things enjoyed here, having been not our own rightly, but stolen, shall
be paid for in over measure, by evil things to be suffered hereafter.

And what I have said of the world, will apply also to life and to death.
Oh, the infinite difference whether life is ours, or but stolen for an
instant; whether death is ours, our subject, ministering only to our
good; or our fearful enemy, our ever keen pursuer, from whose grasp we
have escaped for a few short years, but who is following fast after us,
and when he has once caught us will hold us fast for ever! Have we ever
seen his near approach--has he ever forced himself upon our notice
whether we would or no? But two days since he was amongst us,--we were,
as it were, forced to look upon him. Did we think that he was ours, or
that we were his? If we are his, then indeed he is fearful: fearful to
the mere consciousness of nature; a consciousness which no arguments can
overcome; fearful if it be merely the parting from life, if it be
merely the resigning that wonderful thing which we call our being. It is
fearful to go from light to darkness, from all that we have ever known
and loved, to that of which we know and love nothing. But if death, even
thus stingless, is yet full of horror, what is he with his worst sting
beside, the sting of our sins? What is he when he is taking us, not to
nothingness, but to judgment? He is indeed so fearful then, that no
words can paint him half so truly as our foreboding dread of him, and no
arguments which the wit of man can furnish can strip him of his terrors.

But what if death too, as well a