That we all want to be influenced by such thoughts is too evident to need proof. The very best of us are wont practically to regard this earth as our abiding home, or the only stage upon which we shall ever act a part, and earthly pursuits and pleasures as the only aims and rewards of our being. We may write “D. V.,” or say, “If the LORD will,” after every engagement, every proposed scheme. We may make our wills and set our houses in order, and purchase a burial place, and carry about a shroud, and yet forget that we have to die. Grey hairs, or enfeebled frames, and the perceptible growth within us of the seeds of mortal disease, and sick beds, and sudden deaths around us, may cause us momentary misgivings, may make us perhaps permanently a little uneasy: but still we live on, as though there were no end of life; we put off preparation for death, and for another state after death, as though we could not die till we chose to do so. Not for want of knowledge, of constant testimonies and reminders of the contrary are we thus confident (for we all know that our life is but a vapour which the heat may presently dispel, or the wind of the next moment cause to vanish), but because we do not feel ourselves to be so entirely in the hands of an Omnipotent and mysteriously exercised Providence, as to need to be constantly depending upon it, and asking of it, “If the LORD will;” and so presenting to ourselves, in all its force, the consideration that perhaps “The LORD may _not_ will.” I speak to men, and women, and children, full of present occupations and future plans. I bid you consider your occupations and review your plans. Do you imagine that the first may be at any moment interrupted, and the last never begun to be carried out? Some of you are almost exclusively pleasure seekers; others, careless creatures of the present; others intent upon business, or profit, upon obtaining power, or knowledge, or fame; either reaping a worldly harvest now, or sowing for a future worldly harvest. Others are divided in care and desire between this life and the next. Others are in theory, and in much practice, living above this world, using it but not abusing it, in it but not of it. Put the question to yourselves, all and each of you. Do you feel your life to be such a vapour, that it is in momentary risk of vanishing away; that only if the LORD will, will it appear a little time; that possibly He may not will? You would say, “yes,” doubtless, if you were forced to answer aloud, as you sit in church, interrogated by the messenger of CHRIST out of the Bible, just as to a question out of the Church Catechism, you would give an answer out of the Church Catechism. But do you _feel_ “yes”? Is it your sure and strong conviction? Do your lives say “yes”? I shall not be unjust to you, if I say that I stand in doubt of many of you; that, alas! I have no doubt of some; that your hearts do not thus respond; that your lives give a manifest contradiction.