Page:Massillon's sermons for all the Sundays and festivals throughout the year.djvu/132

118 fulfilling them alone made them saints. Oh! if there were an easier road to Heaven, it would certainly have been pointed out to us; it would have been traced out in the gospel; there would have been saints who would have walked it, and encouragements would have been held out to us by the Church to follow their easy example. But you know that there has been nothing of the kind. Good God! how little do men consult the dictates of reason when their eternal salvation is at stake!

Be not, therefore, lulled into a fatal security by the assurance that you are as virtuous as other people. On the contrary, beware of the multitude: walk not with the multitude, lest you share the same fate. Take your model from the saints, and imitate their virtues and sanctity. If you are innocent, continue to fulfil every precept of the gospel, and by self-denial and prayer prepare yourselves for future temptations. If you are sinners, bewail your sins without ceasing; water your couch every night with your tears; put on the weeds of mourning; and anticipate the judgments of God by mortification and penance. Enter on this penitential time with alacrity and joy; and instead of seeking to increase, or of availing yourselves of, the relaxations which the multitude has extorted, vie with the penitents of old: make it a truly penitential time. Be not seduced by the examples of the impenitent; but, with the chosen few, devote both body and soul to the painful works of fasting and penance. Then you may confidently hope that you will receive the reward promised to the truly penitent, and you will be united to their company hereafter in the joys of a blissful immortality.

attention, my beloved, is again awakened by a repetition of the dreadful truths which were the subject of my last discourse. In this parable, the elect and the reprobate are plainly designated; and the comparatively small number of the elect is discernible to the slightest observer. In the first place, out of that immense multitude of people who either know not God, or refuse obedience to his authority, and throw off the restraints of