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. Let that, however, be as it
may, two remarks suggest themselves as prudent restraints upon a
doctrine which else _may_ wander, and _has_ wandered, into an
uncharitable superstition. The first is this: that many people are
likely to exaggerate the horror of a sudden death from the disposition
to lay a false stress upon words or acts simply because by an accident
they have become _final_ words or acts. If a man dies, for
instance, by some sudden death when he happens to be intoxicated, such
a death is falsely regarded with peculiar horror; as though the
intoxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. But _that_ is
unphilosophic. The man was, or he was not, _habitually_ a drunkard.
If not, if his intoxication were a solitary accident, there can be no