ters have
told us, no matter when death comes, it will always come suddenly
to us. We can never be enough prepared for it. We can never take it
unawares, but it will too frequently take us unawares.

The lesson, then, taught us to-day by this text is that we should
be prepared to meet this death whenever and wherever it shall come,
and passing from the text of to-day to him whose memory we serve,
it teaches us the lesson that death often comes as sudden as a
thief in the night. It comes to snatch us away from all social
relations, to take us away from home, to take us away from friends,
family and all that is dear to us; to take us from earth to heaven,
to take us from time to eternity. Death points this out to us, and
his death should teach us a strong and emphatic lesson. If he
(pointing to the bier) were here to-day to talk to you, he would
not ask for a eulogy on his life, but he would ask you to take a
lesson home to yourselves from his life to make you purer, richer
and better. He would say: "By my life so guide your own. If there
is anything else in my death to teach you to value life, to teach
you to value Christ, and Almighty God, and the Holy Church, and the
sacraments--oh, take it home to your own hearts, and make it part
of yourselves. If I have suffered, let my suffering be a lesson to
you; let it come home to your hearts and make you better and
holier." His life and his death, dear friends, teach us to make
ourselves better, teach us to make ourselves holier, and to prepare
ourselves for our last moment.

What a change is here from a couple of weeks ago! To-day friends
near and dear to him bore all that is mortal of him up this aisle
to receive the last rites of the Church; and only two weeks ago
that same person walked this floor and came up these aisles in all
the vigor of his manhood. He came here with all the charity of his
faith and nature to worship at the same altar before which and on
which to-day his obsequies are said. O! this is a strong lesson to
us. Who would think when he led that body of men here to the
sacrament of the altar to make himself purer and better--who would
think that in the short term of two weeks that health and vigor and
manhood would be snatched ruthlessly from him? But such was the
fact, and this