You see, my brethren, that the first condition of being able to prepare for a happy death is to have lived well. But you ask--Is one who begins late in life to serve God, who knows that he has but a short time to do something for Him, to give up his case as hopeless, and despair of fulfilling this great obligation? Must he say I have, alas! made no life-preparation of this solemn account, and it is too late now? Far be it from me to say that; but this I know: he must begin now all the more earnestly, and do what he can with all the greater effort, as the time is the shorter. O my dear brethren! that these late workmen in God's service, and the dying, would understand this! Such an one falls sick. He is attacked with a disease which will soon run its course. He sends for a priest. He makes his confession as well as he can--he would have made a better one if he had been well, for he is not in a condition to remember the events of so many years; he is sorry for his neglect and his sins; sorry for all the comforts of religion that he has lost; but, tell me, is he sorry for what God has lost by his careless life? {274} Does he express one regret that God has not only not had His own, but that He has also been dishonored by his bad life; that the Church of the faith he professes has been a loser by him; that he, by his inconsistent conduct, has been a stumbling-block and a rock of scandal to the unbeliever and the scoffer? No, this is the last thing that troubles him. What is one to do? Plainly this: Religion ought now to be his all-absorbing thought. Every moment should be employed with a holy jealousy in prayer, lest God might be forgotten again. One, and only one, desire ought to fill his heart, and that is a desire to love God as perfectly as he may before he die. He should frequently call to mind that comforting assurance which our blessed Lord gave to the penitent Magdalen: "Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath __loved much__." It is not the time for excuses, as so many seem to think it to be, but a time of humble abandonment to the will and the mercy of God. It is a painful sight to witness the contrary; to see the sick and the dying full of complaints, resisting the will of God, and praying for a few more years of a miserable life. If it were for the purpose of living in the love of God, and repairing the bitter past, it would be well. But no, their hearts are breaking to think they are forced to part with the world that they have loved too well. {275} But oh! how sweet it is to see a soul, at the close of life, striving to detach itself from the world, and, as it were, reaching forward to throw itself into the embraces of its God. True, it may have been idle for many long years, and it may have come only at the eleventh hour, but that hour, at least, is well spent. These are they of whom the Master will say: "I will give to these last even as to the first." [Footnote 103] Such may also