Page:Alchemyofhappiness en.djvu/98

90 and servants, and should open his coffers and spend his property for his own pleasures. Suppose farther that he should even be consulting with the prince's enemy who has designs upon the principality, and should enter into a compact with him. Just at this point the prince from a concealed retreat espies his conduct in his family, and learns how he has wasted his money and his possessions, and in short becomes acquainted with everything he has done. The man also learns that for some time the prince has been aware of his course of conduct, but that the reason of his delaying and postponing punishment was that he might see what other crimes he would commit, that he might punish him accordingly. In these circumstances the reflecting can easily appreciate what would be the confusion and mortification of this individual. He would think it a thousand times better to fall from a precipice and be dashed to pieces, or that the earth should open and he sink into the abyss, than that he should continue to live. So also is it with you. How many actions you perform, of which you say, "it is in private and no one sees it," or of which Satan cloaks over the guilt from your mind, by persuading you that it is all right and fair. But at last, when death comes and makes your sin manifest, then the fire of ignominy and shame makes you captive to fierce torments and long continued misery....

Suppose you should throw a stone over against a wall, and some one should come and inform you that the stone had hit your own house, and had put out the eye of your son. When you rush to your house and find that it is even so, can you conceive of the fire of repentance and anguish yon will have to meet?...

Nor can the overwhelming nature of the remorse or the pain of the punishment be compared with the pain of putting out your son's eye, because the former is eternal. The pains and sorrows of the world are but for a few days