Riches!  Beauty!  Pleasure!  Genius!  Fame!

(Hannah More, "Practical Piety" 1811)

To the dying bed we must all inevitably come.

Those who are brought to serious reflection by the beneficial affliction of a sick bed, will look back with astonishment on their former false estimate of worldly things.

Riches!  Beauty!  Pleasure!  Genius!  Fame!

What are these in the eyes of the sick and dying?

Riches! These are so far from affording them a moment's ease, that it will be well if no remembrance of their misuse aggravates their present pains. They feel as if they only wished to live, that they might henceforth dedicate their riches to the purposes for which they were given.

Beauty! "What is beauty?" they cry, as they consider their own sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, and pallid countenance. They acknowledge with the Psalmist that, "You make his beauty to consume away like a moth--surely every man is vanity." Psalm 39:11

Genius! What is it? Without faith, genius is only a lamp on the gate of a palace. It may serve to cast a gleam of light on those outside, but the inhabitant sits in darkness.

Pleasure! This has not left a trace behind it.

Fame! Of this their very soul acknowledges the emptiness. They are astonished that they could ever have been so infatuated as to pursue a shadow--to embrace a cloud. They now rate at its true value the fame which will be so soon forgotten in death.

As we approach the 'land of realities'--the 'shadows of this earth' cease to interest or mislead us.

The films are removed from our eyes.

Objects are stripped of their false luster.

Nothing that is really little, any longer looks great.

The mists of vanity are dispersed.

Eternal things assume their proper magnitude, for we behold them with a true vision.

We have ceased to lean on the world, for we have found it both a broken reed and a spear. It has failed us, and it has pierced us.

We lean not on ourselves, for we have long known our own weakness.
We lean not on our virtues, for they can do nothing for us.

But we know in Whom we have trusted. We look upward with holy but humble confidence to that Great Shepherd, who having long since led us into green pastures, having corrected us by His rod, and supported us by His staff, will, we humbly trust, guide us through the dark valley of the shadow of death, and safely land us on the peaceful shores of everlasting rest!