him who suffers it,) from the false disposition to lay a stress upon words or acts, simply because by an accident they have become 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 reason at all for allowing special emphasis to this act, simply because through misfortune it became his final act.  Nor, on the other hand, if it were no accident, but one of his habitual transgressions, will it be the more habitual or the more a transgression, because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused this habitual transgression to be also a final one?  Could the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would have been a new feature in his act of intemperance—­a feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one that by possibility felt himself drawing near to the presence of God.  But this is no part of the case supposed.  And the only new element in the man’s act is not any element of extra immorality, but simply of extra misfortune.

The other remark has reference to the meaning of the word sudden.  And it is a strong illustration of the duty which for ever calls us to the stern valuation of words—­that very possibly Caeesar and the Christian church do not differ in the way supposed; that is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine as between Pagan and Christian views of the moral temper appropriate to death, but that they are contemplating different cases.  Both contemplate a violent death; a [Greek:  biathanatos]—­death that is [Greek:  biaios]:  but the difference is—­that the Roman by the word “sudden” means an unlingering death:  whereas the Christian Litany by “sudden” means a death without warning, consequently without any available summons to religious preparation.  The poor mutineer, who kneels down to gather into his heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pitying comrades, dies by a most sudden death in Caesar’s sense:  one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly not one) groan, and all is over.  But, in the sense of the Litany, his death is far from sudden; his offence, originally, his imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sentence and its execution, having all furnished him with separate warnings of his fate—­having all summoned him to meet it with solemn preparation.