APPLICATION.
The rehearsal of this Fable almost unavoidably draws our attention to that very serious and important point, the consideration of a death-bed repentance, the sincerity of which we may justly suspect in one whose whole life has been spent in acts of wickedness and impiety. To expose the absurdity of relying upon such a weak foundation, we need only ask the same question with the Kite in the Fable: how can he, who has offended the Gods all his life-time by acts of dishonour and injustice, expect that they will be pleased with him at last, for no other reason but because he fears he shall not be able to offend them any longer? Since the summons to “pass that bourn whence no traveller returns,” must one day come, we ought always to be prepared to meet it. But when the whole life has been wasted, without communion with, or totally estranged from that Almighty Being, by whose fiat it was called into existence, then indeed the polluted soul must be distracted with the agonizing thoughts of appearing before Him, who created it for a very different purpose. Nothing but the consciousness of having led a virtuous life, can in the awful moment, disarm death of his terrors, and fortify the mind with cheering hopes and resignation. But this is a subject of the utmost importance, and the due enforcing of it is one of the most solemn duties of the pulpit.
THE FOX AND THE LION.
The first time the Fox saw the Lion, he fell down at his feet, and was ready to die with fear. The second time he took courage, and could even bear to look upon him. The third time he had the impudence to come up to him, to salute him, and to enter into familiar conversation with him.
APPLICATION.
From this Fable we may observe the two extremes in which we may fail as to a proper behaviour towards our superiors. The one is a bashfulness, proceeding either from a vicious guilty mind, or a timorous rusticity; the other an over-bearing impudence, which assumes more than becomes it, and so renders the person insufferable to the conversation of well-bred reasonable people. But there is a difference between the bashfulness which arises from a want of education, and the shame-facedness that accompanies conscious guilt: the first by time and a nearer acquaintance, may be ripened into a proper liberal behaviour; the other no sooner finds an easy practicable access, but it throws off all manner of reverence, grows every day more and more familiar, and branches out at last into the utmost indecency and irregularity. Indeed there are many occasions which may happen to cast an awe, or even a terror, upon our minds at first view, without any just or reasonable grounds; but upon a little recollection, or a nearer insight, we recover ourselves, and can appear indifferent and unconcerned, where before we were ready to sink under a load of diffidence and fear. We should upon such occasions use our endeavours to regain a due degree of steadiness and resolution; but at the same time we must have a care that our efforts in that respect do not force the balance too much, and make it rise to an unbecoming freedom, and an offensive familiarity.
