Oh! how that Mother Church prays for you! With outstretched arms to heaven she implores the divine mercy. "_Spare, O Lord, spare thy people, and give not thine heritage to reproach_." Leave me not alone without this only son of my heart, for whom Christ died! But you are in your agony now, and hear nothing. You are not moved to tears, as you would be, if you could but hear those agonizing prayers. {81} You lie indifferent to all around, while the disease fastens upon your very vitals: one sin after another, one temptation given way to after another, until the life-blood of your soul has frozen in its channels: and before your weeping, inconsolable mother, the Church--before God, and in sight of His holy Angels and Saints, you are dead! dead!! dead!!! Like the fruitless church of Sardis, in the Apocalypse: "_Thou hast a name that thou livest, but art dead_." [Footnote 37] [Footnote 37: Apoc. iii., 1.] What are the signs, my brethren, by which you would pronounce a man dead? Surely, that he has no longer the use of any of his senses; that he can neither see, hear, taste, touch nor smell. If nothing remained to him but faint breathing, and a fluttering, feeble pulse, you would already weep for him as lost to you, and consider it only as the matter of a few moments to draw the sheet over his face, and prepare his shroud. Now this is just the deplorable state of a man in mortal sin. {82} Let me illustrate this. If you saw a person walking upon a railroad track, and the train came thundering along directly in front of him, and yet he proceeded on his way, totally unmindful of your shouts and warnings of danger, you would throw up your hands and exclaim: "Ah! God have mercy on him, poor man; he must be totally blind and deaf--he is as good as dead." And so he is in effect; for the train passes over him, and scatters his mangled body hither and thither. Of what use to him was his power of motion? He had the name of a living man, and is dead. So death is coming upon you, sinner, sudden and destructive. How many sermons have you not heard upon that awful subject? How many warnings have you not had in the deaths, ever unlocked for, alas! too often unprovided for, among your friends, acquaintances, and in the very bosom of your family. You hear not, you see not; no warning will turn you from your fatal track. You are as good as dead.