soul may be getting strong; you may be growing purer in heart, stronger in faith, more fer

vent in prayer, more unworldly in your desires, more anxious for pardon, more conscious of your sins, more grieved at the sins you have indulged, a more frequent partaker of the blessed Sacrament of Christ's body and blood, more truly prepared to receive it, more humble in your own eyes, and more keenly alive to the unspeakable love of God in Christ Jesus.

O my friend, if you are but prepared, how great a gain it will be to die, how blessed a change! You will lay down this vile, weak, feeble body, full of labour and sorrow; you will lay down your aching limbs, your worn-out tabernacle of flesh; and your soul, freed from this frail, drooping, decaying body, will spring upward like the lark and pass into paradise. In paradise, amid the spirits of just men, amid the blissful souls of the saints, your soul will abide until the day of Christ's second coming; and then when His voice calls the dead out of their graves, you will only have fresh joys, fresh pleasures, and a great increase to your felicity; for then your vile body, quickened by Christ, will be changed and fashioned by His power into a glorious body like unto His own, a body

that will never know pain or weakness, hunger or thirst, a body that will never suffer and never die.

Think of the blessedness of such a change; think how great a change it will be to pass from your present home into paradise. Prepare then to meet thy God; prepare to die; watch and pray; pray without ceasing; walk with God, and thus you will be enabled in the hour of your death to commend your soul in hope into your Saviour's hands, and to say, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." May God the Holy Ghost be with you, to help you and succour you for Christ's sake!

THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER.

WOE be to him who shall shed man's blood; by man shall his blood be shed; by God shall both body and soul be cast into hell; no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him; nay, he is dead while he lives, dead indeed, even though he should escape discovery among men; the earth will disclose at last the blood that he has shed; murder will out, if not in this world, yet before the judgment-seat of Christ. He may pray the mountains to fall on him and the hills to cover him, but he will have to rise with his stained hands and his stained soul before the presence of Almighty God, the great God and the terrible, who will take vengeance on the murderer, who will repay him for his deed, who will require his brother's blood at his hand.

Resist then all angry and cruel thoughts that may at last lead to blood; resist all feelings of revenge and hate, resist all greediness of gain, all guilty thirst for the possessions of other men ;

resist all thoughts of murder however faint or slight, cast them from you as you would a serpent from your hand, suffer them not to live even a moment in your heart. Above all, do not say, "why do you speak to me of murdering ; what have I to do with any thing so horrible ?" Only search the histories of murderers. There was a time in the life of every one of them, when they would have shuddered like you or me at any tale of cruelty or of murder; when they would have started at the sight of blood. If you indulge revenge, covetousness, drunkenness, you cannot tell where these sins will end. Down and down do men sink from bad to worse; from lesser sins to greater; and they often do that at last which at one time they would have trembled even to think of.

Take, for instance, the case of Cain, the first murderer. He did not at once wish to slay his brother. He began by offering God a less acceptable sacrifice; he then went on to envy Abel because he offered better things, and then from envy he was led on to slay his brother. So was it also with the traitor Judas. First he began to covet, then his covetousness tempted him to steal, then the covetousness becoming greater still, he was led to betray the innocent

blood, and for thirty pieces of silver to sell his Lord. Pass on from these great cases to those that happen in our day. First a man falls into bad company, he begins to drink, he is tempted into the beer-shop, he repeats his visits, he gets more fond of wild ways and wild companions, then comes stealing, then comes murder. No man begins with murder; it is the end of his iniquity; and when he first sets out on evil ways he little suspects where the devil will make him end. Take the cases of the more notorious murderers of the day and see how they began ; the same tale is told in all, they began with some lesser sin; in one there was the indulgence of fleshly lusts, in the other there was indolence and want of industry that led him to thieve or poach; in another, anger, passionateness and the spirit of revenge were allowed to have their way; in another there was greediness of gain, a thirst for money; in another jealousy, envy. These are the roads to murder, the beginnings of murderous thoughts, the first steps of the ladder, and men yielding to these sins have been drawn on and on, till at last they have put their hands to some bloody deed from which once they would have recoiled with horror.

This it is that makes me say, do not think it