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MY Dear Children, you will pass your life without Trouble, if you be not afraid to lose it; Death treading on our Heels continu∣ally, and being almost always by our side, we need not wonder, if they whose Consciences accuse them do fear it; and if they have not one moment of quiet, all other Objects pass a∣way, but this stays with them and never quits them.
Do not seek for a Reason why so many die without making their Wills, nor why they do
not make them but at the last extremity? It is because they cannot make it without speaking of Death, which they fly and fear above all things.
There is no Person amongst us, to whom the Life of Jared and Methusalem is not always present; every one flatters himself with the length of the Course they are to run; and con∣siders himself always as if he had but just begun it, and never as if he was going to end it.
Experience may well teach us, that more then half of the World dies before Threescore, and yet all run Counter to this Experience, and look upon it as in Relation to others, and place themselves in the number of those that must have a pleasant and a happy Old Age.
One dies in his Bed, as in the Field of Bat∣tel; of a Fever, as with the Shot of a Musket, and no Man is sure that he shall live longer than another.
To the end that Death may not take from the Goods that you possess, and all the Pleasures you enjoy, deprive your self by little and little of both the one and the other; and Death will have little more to do when it can do no harm; it will not come so soon for the most part, nor when it cannot affright when it comes.
Death does not look hideous and terrible, but when it is look'd upon as a Monster, an Ene∣my to Nature; if you will often approach to it in your Thoughts, and make it familiar to you, you will afterward look upon it as a
Friend that comes to assist you, and to carry you from the miserable Condition you are in.
Death is the Mistress of our Days, but not of our Minds and Hearts; she can deprive us of Life, but not against our Will, if we expect it without Fear or Trouble.
Wherefore should you fear Death, since you cannot grieve for Life after you have lost it, because you are threatned with a Hundred sorts of Deaths, must you fear them all; is it not better quietly to expect one?
If by fearing Death you could be assur'd to avoid it; this Fear would be reasonable even in the greatest Men; but being it cannot produce this effect, it serves fo•• nothing but to make you die a thousand times, though you can but die once.
No Man is grieved that he did not live a hun∣dred Years since; and why should any one grieve that he should not live in Five Hundred Years to come; you have no more right to the future than you have to the past; you are be∣twixt them both, hold your self in Peace, and be content.
You will go out of the World as you came into it, not knowing the Day; make good use of this ignorance, this moment so terrible to some is hid from you, perhaps for no other rea∣son, but that you should think every Day the last of your Life.
What matters it if you die Ten or Twelve Years before it was expected; amongst an innu∣numerable number of Men, can one know that there are two or three fewer, or that Paris is not so well peopl'd, or the State not so well served.
Life and Death are equally natural; you be∣gan to live without Desire or Passion; and you ought to die so. The World is a Theater on which every one plays his part; it is for the beauty of the Universe and his own Advan∣tage, that every one acts his own in his time.
You ought to know how to die, whilst o∣thers learn to live; there is only God that is E∣ternal; your continual changes from nothing to life, from health to sickness, and from Life to Death, ought to give you a high Idea of the grandeur of the infinitely perfect Being.
It would surprize you if one of your Ser∣vants should refuse to obey your Order in any thing but what pleases him; it is equally won∣derful, that God that has created us to live and to die, and that we should obey him in the one, and refuse it in the other.
It is to cease to be a Man, to make himself an Enemy to Death. Since you are born to die, you are subject to Death as well as to Life, and I can assure you are alive and dead at the same time. You are alive, because you are not yet dead; you are dead, because you were not a∣live in Ages past, and you shall nor be alive in those to come.
If you make ill use of your Life, it is unpro∣fitable to you, and when you lose it you lose nothing, wherefore are you then afraid to lose it; have not you more reason to hope it than to fear it?
You have been Heir to your Ancestors, is it not reasonable that your Children should be your Successors? your Life is limited to Fif∣teen or Twenty Lustres, why should you de∣sire to go beyond it? Have your Ancestors done you the wrong to take your places, wherefore would you fill the Places of your Descendants?
It is strange to fear an imperceptible moment to the last breath we live; and so soon as we are expired, it cannot be truly said that we die, since we are no more. We do not find this Death in one that is yet alive, nor do we more find it in him who is nor more, because he is past Death, and it has no more power of him.
A Dwarf is a Man as much as a Giant; and he that lives but a short time is as much a Man as Adam and Seth, who lived many Ages; the great and the little in the Life of Man, is but as one point in regard of Eternity; and the World seems no more empty by his Death, than the Sea appears dry by a drop of Water taken from it.
It would be terrible and frightful to us, if Man could not die, since he would find his Life a Fountain of inexhaustible Miseries.
Thales the wise Graecian assures us, that it is the same thing to live and to die; and one day being asked why he did not die; he answer'd, because if I should die, it would be asked why I did not live?
I am not of that Philosophers Opinion; I do acknowledge that Life is a Good that God has given us to enjoy, and that Death is a punish∣ment of sin, therefore I do not look upon them as things indifferent; yet the difference that we find between them, ought not to give us too great a tie to the one, nor too great a fear for the other. We are all Criminals, but we ought not go cowardly to our Punishment; we ought to be sorry that we have given cause for our Condemnation, but we ought to suffer with Submission, Courage, and Constancy.
The first of our Days teaches us to live, but the last does not teach us to die; learn this Les∣son long before you make use of it, and the sooner you do it the better.
In all Contracts of Marriage, there are Ar∣ticles that concern the Death of both Husband and Wife; and as soon as we make a strict alliance with Reason, we ought to make Ar∣ticles of Death between her and our selves; this will make our Alliance more firm, more Spiritual and more Christian.