EXTREME UNCTION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 172, 14 July 1876, Page 15

EXTREME UNCTION.

But it is at the sight of the tomb, the silent portico of another world, that Christianity unfolds its sublimity. If the greater part of the ancient religions have consecrated the ashes of the dead, not one of them has thought to prepare the soul for those unknown shores from which it never returns. In order to see the most beautiful spectacle that the earth can present, you must see the Christian die. That man is no longer the man of the world, he belongs no longer to his country ; all his relations with society have ceased. For him the calculation by time is ended, and he dates now only with the great era of eternity. A priest seated at his pillow consoles him. This holy minister communes with the dying one upon the immortality of his soul, and the sublime scene that the entire antiquity has presented but a single time, the first of its dying philosophers, is renewed every day upon the pallet of the lowest (in station) of the dying Chnstians. . At last the supreme moment has arrived j a Sacrament has opened the gates of the world to this just man, a Sacrament closes them upon him; religion balances him in the cradle of life; its beautiful songs and its material hand still will lull him to sleep in the cradle of death. It prepares the baptism of this second birth ; but it is no longer water that it chooses, it is oil, the emblem of celestial incorruptibility. The liberating Sacrament breaks little !by little the earthly ties of the faithful one ; his soul, half escaped from his body, becomes almost visible upon his countenance. Already he hears the music of the Seraphim ; now he is ready to fly away towards those regions where the Divine Hope, the daughter of Virtue and of Death is beckoning him. In the meantime the angel of peace, descending towards this righteous one, touches his weary eyes with her sceptre of gold, and closes them delightfully to the light. He dies, and his friends do not hear his last breath; he dies, and, long after he is no more, they keep silent around his couch, for they think that he still sleeps; thus this Christian has passed beyond (this earth) with delight.—Chateaubriand.