stem, and as come to nought. For a minute, perhaps, it thinks of
them in sorrow, then leaves them--leaves them for ever. It keeps its
eye on things seen and temporal. Truly whenever a man dies, rich or
poor, an immortal soul passes to judgment; but somehow we read of the
deaths of persons we have seen or heard of, and this reflection never
comes across us. Thus does the world really cast off men's souls, and
recognizing only their bodies, it makes it appear as if "that which
befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts, even one thing befalleth
them, as the one dieth so dieth the other; yea, they have all one
breath, so that a man hath no pre-eminence over a beast, for all is
vanity[2]."

But let us follow the course of a soul thus casting off the world, and
cast off by it. It goes forth as a stranger on a journey. Man seems
to die and to be no more, when he is but quitting us, and is really
beginning to live. Then he sees sights which before it did not even
enter into his mind to conceive, and the world is even less to him than
he to the world. Just now he was lying on the bed of sickness, but in
that moment of death what an awful change has come over him! What a
crisis for him! There is stillness in the room that lately held him;
nothing is doing there, for he is gone, he now belongs to others; he
now belongs entirely to the Lord who bought him; to Him he returns; but
whether to be lodged safely in His place of hope, or to be imprisoned
against the great Day, that is another matter, that depends on the
deeds done in the body, whether good or evil. And now what are his
thoughts? How infinitely important now appears the value of time, now
when it is nothing to him! Nothing; for though he spend centuries
waiting for Christ, he cannot now alter his state from bad to good, or
from good to bad. What he dieth that he must be for ever; as the tree
falleth so must it lie. This is the comfort of the true servant of
God, and the misery of the transgressor. His lot is cast once and for
all, and he can but wait in hope or in dread. Men on their death-beds
have declared, that no one could form a right idea of the value of time
till he came to die; but if this has truth in it, how much more truly
can it be said after death! What an estimate shall we form of time
while we are waiting for judgment! Yes, it is we--all this, I repeat,
belongs to us most intimately. It is not to be looked at as a picture,
as a man might