hereafter die; fate may be bravely met, and conduct
wisely ordered, on either expectation; but never in hesitation between
ungrasped hope, and unconfronted fear. We usually believe in
immortality, so far as to avoid preparation for death; and in mortality,
so far as to avoid preparation for anything after death. Whereas, a wise
man will at least hold himself prepared for one or other of two events,
of which one or other is inevitable; and will have all things in order,
for his sleep, or in readiness, for his awakening.

Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble judgment, if he determine to
put them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an
enviable state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, an unusual one. I
know few Christians so convinced of the splendour of the rooms in their
Father's house, as to be happier when their friends are called to those
mansions, than they would have been if the Queen had sent for them to
live at Court: nor has the Church's most ardent 'desire to depart, and
be with Christ,' ever cured it of the singular habit of putting on
mourning for every person summoned to such departure. On the contrary, a
brave belief in death has been assuredly held by many not ignoble
persons, and it is a sign of the last depravity in the Church itself,
when it assumes that such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of
character, or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any
rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which
may be granted him; nor does the anticipation of death to-morrow
suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunkenness
to-day. To teach that there is no device in the grave, may indeed make
the deviceless person more contented in his dulness; but it will make
the deviser only more earnest in devising, nor is human conduct likely,
in every case, to be purer under the conviction that all its evil may in
a moment be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in a moment redeemed; and
that the sigh of repentance, which purges the guilt of the past, will
waft the soul into a felicity which forgets its pain,--than it may be
under the sterner, and to many not unwise minds, more probable,
apprehension, that 'what a man soweth that shall he also reap'--or
others reap,--when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more in
darkness, but lies down therein.

But to men whose feebleness of sight, or bitterness of soul, or the
offence given