death, so sudden and awful, may be ours--if not in
the same manner, in other manners equally sudden, if not as
atrocious.

Therefore the lesson is brought home to us to be always prepared
lest God should strike us, for His angel is always coming from Him
to touch the young and the old, the deformed and the beautiful, and
His touch is enough to call them from this earth to the land above.

And now, my dear friends, have we reason to be sorry to-day? Have
we reason to mourn that our friend has gone from us? No, my
friends; there is no reason for mourning the death of a person who
has lived a religious life. As the epistle tells us, the religious
man, and one pleasing to God the Father, is he who visits the
orphans and widows in their tribulation, and he is one, too, who
preserves himself undefiled from the world. I shall not pronounce
his eulogy, but examine his life in the light of this text, and see
whether or not he was religious; and if his life was a religious
life, and if it was, we must inevitably come to the conclusion that
he was pleasing to Almighty God, and now enjoys the repose promised
by Almighty God to those who serve Him while on earth. Religion
pure and undefiled is to visit the widow and orphan. Did he do
that? What was his avocation and mission in life? It was the
grandest and noblest after the avocation of priest. It was to deal
out charity--a charity of word and charity of example, to minister
to the unfortunate, to heal the ailments of human life. This was
his mission and this his vocation. Did he fulfil his vocation; I
ask you here in the presence of his mortal remains, did he carry
out his vocation? Most assuredly, my friends, he did so And why did
he do so? The very manner in which he met his death will tell you
in more emphatic terms than I can possibly utter. A call comes that
a fellow being is in suffering. Other things are crowded upon
him--other business demands were calling for him. But he hearkened
to the call of humanity. He was told that a fellow-man was sick,
and instantly, without hesitation, with his heart full of charity,
and in his hands the very instruments to bring relief and mercy to
a fellow being, he goes forth with mercy, charity and good will to
his fellow-man and--meets what? An atrocious death! In the