the divider. The man of mere sight says, "1 shall see my friend no more." Death, on the contrary, in the eye of him who has living faith, is the assurer of everlasting union and fellowship. "My friend has finished his course, and is now safe in Christ. If I so finish my course as to be at last safe in Christ, I shall see him for ever."

But I must not any longer linger on this, for it is my purpose, God helping, to say a few words upon the suddenness of death, which one event, at least, of the last few days must have forced on the attention of the most hardened.

Sudden death. We pray against sudden death in the Litany. We pray against it unquestionably as if it were an evil. "From lightning and tempest, from plague, pestilence, and famine, from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord deliver us." Now we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that many pious persons object to our putting up this petition. They say that sudden death may be a very merciful termination of a man's sufferings, or may save a man from days, or weeks, or months of agony. But besides this, those of you who know anything about the history of the Prayer Book must be aware that this petition was formally objected to by the Puritans on two memorable occasions. First, at the conference respecting alterations in the Prayer Book, called the Hampton Court Conference, early in the

seventeenth century; next, at the conference sixty years later, which finally settled the Prayer Book as it is. Indeed, even earlier than this, for the greatest and ablest defender of the Church that ever lived, Richard Hooker, notices this objection as rife even in his time. The Puritans objected to our putting up such a petition as this, because they said the godly ought always to be prepared to die. Hooker

replies, that though we leave all in God's hands, yet that it is quite lawful to prefer one kind of death to another; that it is religion which makes men wish for a leisurable departure; that our prayer importeth a twofold desire; first, for some convenient or fitting respite; but if that be denied, then, at least, that although death be sudden in itself, nevertheless, in regard of our prepared minds it may not be sudden. "A person," as Bishop Wilson writes, "whose heart is devoted to God will never be surprised by death." The more a man lives by faith in the unseen world the less suddenly will that world break upon him at last. I have had this objection to this prayer in our Litany more than once put to me for explanation in Bible classes. A friend of my own, a devoted member of the Church, and an office-bearer in it, told me once that this was the only petition in which he could not heartily join.

I will now give two reasons why we should earnestly pray this prayer.

First of all, whatever certain religious people may say, the common sense of mankind would lead us to regard sudden death as a more awful mode of death, and therefore to be prayed against: in subordination, of course, to the will of God.

The account of a sudden death; supposing, of course, that we have known or been interested in him who is dead-the account of a sudden death, I say, affects us differently from that of any other. An ordinary lingering death grieves us; but a sudden death shocks us; and shocks us just in proportion to its suddenness. If the man who has died suddenly has lived a wicked or godless life, we are inexpressibly shocked. We make a strong effort in our minds to ignore his eternal state, and leave him entirely, even in thought, in the hands of his just but merciful Judge. So that the common feelings of mankind, I think, demand this petition; but this seems to me a very low way of looking at the objection and its answer.

A man objects to this petition, and, as I have more than once heard, gives the old Puritan reason that the godly should always be prepared to die, so that they who use the Litany being supposed to be "godly," may well leave the thing in God's hands-nay, they may for themselves even desire sudden death. Now it is somewhat difficult answering the objection thus put; difficult to me, at least, to answer it

without appearing rude to the objector; for in answering it in the only way possible, I have to assume that he is grossly ignorant of the first principle of common or united prayer-grossly ignorant of, or indifferent to, the whole idea of Church worship as distinguished from private worship.

You say that, in your own case, you cannot pray to be delivered from "sudden death;" you are prepared, or ought to be, if you use the Litany, for any form of death which God may send. Well," in your own case," you say; but how about the cases of others? It comes to this : for whom do you come to Church to pray? for yourself or for others? It may be that some in the Church are ready at any moment to obey the final summons, but how many? How many, compared with the mass who are living without God in the world? And surely the more men are, as a whole, unprepared for death and judgment, the more earnestly ought the godly—those who have their eyes opened to the realities of eternity-to pray for them, that they may be prepared to stand before their Judge, and that they may not be summoned to stand before Him by a mode of departure out of this life which makes it physically impossible that they should prepare themselves to stand before Him.

Oh, my brethren, it is more difficult to use these Church prayers aright than what we think. We cannot pray aright in Church

unless we make an effort to set before our minds that we are not saved alone, but in a body-the mysterious fellowship of Christ's body. There are many, perhaps deplorably many, who come to Church and do not pray at all they draw nigh to God with their lips, but their hearts are far from Him. There are others who do much-much better than this, for they pray for themselves. They think of their own special sins, for instance, when they pray "from all evil and mischief, from sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil, Good Lord deliver us." But they have little thought beyond this. For any difference it would make to them, Christ might have taught them to begin His own prayer with, "My Father who art in Heaven;" to proceed to say, “give me this day my daily bread," and to conclude it with, "and lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil." But there are, blessed be God, others-a few-who do far, far better than these last. God has opened their eyes to some realization of the truth that "we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another;" and so, in their approaches to God in Church they earnestly desire, and they prepare their hearts to take along with them, all their fellow sinners. They see what numbers of their fellow sinners there are who live as if there was no death and no judgment after it, and they pray accordingly.