thing, it is easy to render it disputable; and thus we make them ready to revolt.

How well have men done to distinguish one another rather by the exterior than by internal endowments! Here is another person and I disputing the way. Which shall give place to the other? The weakest of the two. But I am as stout as he. We must fight about it. But he has four footmen, and I have but one. is evident: we have only to count them. I therefore must yield, and I am a fool if I contest it. This keeps us at peace, which is the greatest of blessings.

That

The nature of our bodies deadens our afflictions and our quarrels: For we change and become other persons. Neither the aggriever, nor the party aggrieved, continue the same. It is like affronting a nation, and seeing them again two generations afterward. They are still the French, but not the same.

The soul must undoubtedly be either mortal, or immortal. This ought to make an entire difference in a system of morality. And yet the philosophers framed their moral systems, altogether independent of it. What astonishing blindness!

The last act is always tragical, how pleasant soever the play may have been throughout, We throw dust to dust, and the curtain drops for

ever,

XXX.

THOUGHTS ON DEATH: EXTRACTED FROM A LETTER WRITTEN BY M. PASCAL ON THE

DEATH OF HIS FATHER.

But

WHEN we are under affliction for the death of a person who was dear to us, or for any other misfortune which befals us, we ought not to seek for consolation in ourselves, or in other men, or in any part of the creation, but we ought to seek it in God alone. And the reason of this is, that no created being is the first cause of those accidents which we call afflictions. the providence of God being the true and only cause, the sovereign, and the disposer of them, we ought, undoubtedly, to repair immediately to their source, and look up to their author to find solid consolation. If we observe this rule, if we look on this death which we are lamenting, not as an effect of chance, or

of those elements and particles of which man is composed, (for God has not left his elect to the caprices of chance,) but as the indispensable, inevitable, just and holy result of a decree of God's providence now executed in the fulness of time; and that whatever has now happened, was from everlasting pre-determined and present with God; if, I say, by a transport of grace, we regard this occurrence, not in itself, and abstracted from God, but out of itself, and in the will of God, in the justice of his decree, and in the order of his providence, which is the real cause that has produced it, without which it would not have happened, by which alone it has happened, and in the very manner in which it has happened; we shall adore in humble silence the unfathomable depth of His judgments; we shall reverence the holiness of His decrees; we shall bless the guidance of His providence; and, uniting our will to the will of God himself, we shall choose with Him, in Him, and for Him, the very same events which He has chosen in us, and for us, from all eternity.

There is no consolation, but in truth alone. It is evident that Seneca and Socrates have nothing which can convince, or console us, on these occasions. Both were in the error which has blinded all mankind from the beginning, They looked on death as natural to man; and

all the discourses which they have founded on this false principle, are so vain and so destitute of solidity, that they only serve by their uselessness to demonstrate how weak men are in general, since the noblest productions of the wisest among them are so childish and contemptible.

It is not so with Jesus Christ; it is not so with the canonical books of scripture. There the truth is revealed: and consolation is as infallibly joined to the truth, as it is infallibly separated from error. Let us, therefore, view death, in that truth which the Holy Spirit has taught us. And we have the admirable advantage of knowing that death is, in truth and reality, the punishment of sin, imposed on man, to expiate his guilt, and necessary to man to cleanse him from sin: that it is this alone which can deliver the soul from the concupiscence of the body, from which saints are never entirely free, while they live in this world. We know that life, and the life of Christians, is a continual sacrifice, which can only be completed by death. We know that Jesus Christ came into the world and offered himself as a sacrifice and a real propitiation; that his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, his sitting for ever at the right hand of the Father, and his presence in the eucharist, are but one

was accomplished in Jesus Christ, must be accomplished also in each of his members.

Let us then consider life as a sacrifice; and let the accidents of life make no other impression on the minds of Christians, but in proportion as they interrupt or accomplish this sacrífice. Let us count nothing evil but what turns a sacrifice to God into a sacrifice to the devil; and let us call every thing a good, which renders that which was a sacrifice to the devil in Adam, a sacrifice to God; and let us examine the nature of death by this rule.

In order to this, it is necessary to recur to the person of Jesus Christ: for as God only regards men through their mediator, Jesus Christ, so ought they neither to regard others, nor themselves, but through his mediation.

If we do not look through this medium, we shall find nothing in ourselves, but real miseries, or abominable pleasures: but if we consider all things in Jesus Christ, we shall find all is consolation, satisfaction, and edification.

Let us then view death in Jesus Christ; not, without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ, it is dreadful, it is detestable, it is the terror of nature. In Jesus Christ, it is altogether different; it is amiable, holy, and the joy of the believer. Every thing, even death itself, is rendered sweet in Jesus Christ; and it was for this he suffered;