Page:AceticLibraryV2PreparationForDeath.djvu/162

 hold an hour?" He who has promised pardon to the penitent, has not promised tomorrow to the sinner; He may give it, or He may not. If you sin now, perhaps God may give you a time for repentance, and perhaps He may not; and if He should not, what will become of you for all eternity? Meanwhile, for a wretched pleasure, truly you lose your soul, and run the risk of losing it for ever? Would you for a brief pleasure cast away all, money, houses, estates, liberty, and life? No. And how then, for that wretched pleasure, are you willing in a moment to lose all truly the soul, heaven, and God? Tell me, are these things true which faith teaches, or are they fables? Is there such a thing, as heaven, hell, eternity? Do you believe that if death should overtake you in a state of sin, you would be lost for ever? And what temerity, what madness is it, to condemn oneself to an eternity of pain, saying, " I trust to remedy it afterwards." S. Augustine says that " no one under the hope of being cured, desires to fall ill." No one is so mad as to take poison, and then to say, I am able afterwards to be cured by remedies; and do you choose to condemn yourself to an eternal death, saying, " Perhaps I may afterwards deliver myself from it?" O folly, which has cast, does still cast, so many souls into hell. According to the threat of the Lord, " Thou hast trusted in thy wickedness, .... therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know whence it riseth." (Isa. xlvii. 10, 11.) Thou hast sinned, rashly confiding in the Divine mercy; the punishment will fall suddenly upon you, without your knowing whence it comes.

Behold, O Lord, one of those foolish ones, who in the hope of recovering it, has so often lost his soul and Thy grace. If Thou hadst caused me to die in that moment, or in that night, when I was in sin, what should have become of me? I thank Thy mercy which has waited for me, and which now makes me to know my folly. I see that Thou desirest my salvation, and I desire to be saved. I repent, O Infinite Goodness, of having so often turned away from Thee. I love Thee with my whole heart. I trust, O my Jesus, through the merits