not tell us; but Rutherford will tell you if you consult him what you
should do. Well, that is one way of practising dying. For Sleep is the
brother of Death. And to meet the one brother right will prepare us to
meet the other. Speculate at night, then--speculate and say, Suppose
this were my last night. Suppose, O my soul, thou wert to cast anchor to-
morrow in Eternity, how shouldst thou close thine eyes to-night?
Speculate also at other men's funerals. When the clod thuds down on
their coffin, think yourself inside of it. When you see the undertaker's
man screwing down the lid, suppose it yours. Take your own way of doing
it; only, practise dying, and let not death spring upon you unawares. Die
daily, for, as Dante says, 'The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight.'

Writing to another old man, Rutherford points out to him the gracious
purpose of God in appointing him his death in old age. 'It is,' says
Rutherford, 'that you may have full leisure to look over all your
accounts and papers before you take ship.' What a tangle our papers also
are in as life goes on; and what need we have of a time of leisure to set
things right before we hand them over. Rutherford, therefore, makes us
see old Carlton on his bed with his pillows propping him up, and a drawer
open on the bed, and bundles of old letters and bills spread out before
him. Old love letters; old business letters; his mother's letters to him
when he was a boy at Edinburgh College; letters in cipher that no human
eye can read but those old, bleared, weeping eyes that fill that too late
drawer with their tears. The old voyager is looking over his papers
before he takes ship. And he comes on things he had totally forgotten:
debts he had thought paid; petitions he had thought answered; promises he
had thought fulfilled; till he calls young Carlton, his son, to his
bedside, and tells him things that break both men's hearts to say and to
hear; and commits to his son and heir sad duties that should never have
been due; debts, promises, obligations, reparations, such that, to