" On the other hand, the divine Litany of our English
Church, when breathing forth supplications, as if in some
representative character, for the whole human race prostrate before
God, places such a death in the very van of horrors: "From lightning
and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and
murder, and from SUDDEN DEATH--_Good Lord, deliver us_." Sudden
death is here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of calamities;
it is ranked among the last of curses; and yet by the noblest of Romans
it was ranked as the first of blessings. In that difference most
readers will see little more than the essential difference between
Christianity and Paganism. But this, on consideration, I doubt. The
Christian Church may be right in its estimate of sudden death; and it
is a natural feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm one, to
wish for a quiet dismissal from life, as that which _seems_ most
reconcilable with meditation, with penitential retrospects, and with
the humilities of farewell prayer. There does not, however, occur to me
any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest petition of the English
Litany, unless under a special construction of the word "sudden." It
seems a petition indulged rather and conceded to human infirmity than
exacted from human piety. It is not so much a doctrine built upon the
eternities of the Christian system as a plausible opinion built upon
special varieties of physical temperament.
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