It may well, I think, be made a question whether we are not becoming too chary of human life; whether we do not allow ourselves to be shocked beyond proper measure by the accidental death of a fellow mortal. There are two points of view from which we look at these sudden strokes of fate, which are so distinctly separated in our minds as to turn each calamity into two calamities; and the one calamity or the other will be regarded as the more terrible according to the religious tendencies of the suffering survivor. There is the religious point of view, which teaches us to consider it to be a terrible thing that a man should be called upon to give up his soul without an hour for special preparation; and there is the human point of view, which fills us with an ineffable regret that one well loved should be taken from those who loved him, apparently without a cause,--with nothing, as we may say, to justify the loss of a head so dear. As regards the religious consideration, we know of course that we are constantly praying, with more or less of earnestness, that the evil of sudden death may not come upon us,--as we pray also that battles may not come. But yet, if occasion require it, if the honour of the country seemed to demand it, we do not hesitate about battles. We may say, at least, that we never hesitate on account of the death that must ensue, though we do hesitate with extreme caution on the score of the money that must be spent. And we consider,--if the cause have been good,--that the blood spilt on battle-fields has been well spilt, and that the lives gallantly rendered there have been well rendered. But the carnage there has all been the carnage of sudden death. It may be,--and yet it may hardly be,--that the soldier, knowing the chances of his profession, shall keep himself prepared for the death-dealing blow; but if the soldier on the eve of battle can do so, then why not he who is about to climb among the mountain snows? But, in truth, the subject is one which does not admit of too curious an inquiry. As we pray to be removed from sudden death, so do we pray that we may always be prepared for it. We are going ever with our lives in our hands, knowing that death is common to all of us; and knowing also,--for all of us who ever think do know it,--that to him who dies death must be horrible or blessed, not in accordance with an hour or two of final preparation, but as may be the state of the dying man's parting soul as the final result of the life which he has led. It suits us in some of our religious moods to insist much on the special dangers of sudden death, but they are dangers which come home in reality to very few of us. What parson, though praying perhaps daily against sudden death, believes that his own boy is specially endangered,--specially endangered as regards his soul,--when he stands with his breast right before the bullets of his country's enemy? In war, in commerce, not unfrequently in science,