Page:Sermons by John-Baptist Massillon.djvu/125

 from which his goodness has always delivered us. The life which we enjoy is like a perpetual miracle, therefore, of his divine mercy. The time which is left to us, is the consequence of an infinity of tender mercies and grace, which compose the thread and the train, as it were, of our life. Every moment we breathe is like a new gift we receive from God; and to waste that time, and these moments, in a deplorable inutility, is to insult that Infinite Goodness which has granted them to us, to dissipate an inestimable grace which is not our due, and to deliver up to chance the price of our eternity. Behold, my brethren, the first guilt attached to the loss of time. It is a precious treasure left to us, though we no longer have a right to it, which is given to us for the purpose alone of purchasing the kingdom of heaven, and which we dissipate as a thing the most vile and contemptible, and of which we know not any use to make.

In the world, we would regard that man as a fool, who, heir to a great fortune, should allow it to be wasted through want of care and attention, and should make no use of it, either to raise himself to places and dignities, which might draw him from obscurity, or in order to confirm to himself a solid establishment, which might place him in future beyond the reach of any reverse.

But, my brethren, time is that precious treasure which we have inherited from our birth, and which the Almighty leaves to us through pure compassion. It is in our possession, and it depends upon ourselves to make a proper use of it. It is not in order to exalt ourselves to frivolous dignities here below, or to worldly grandeurs: alas ! whatever passes away is too vile to be the price of time, which is itself the price of eternity: it is in order to be placed in the heavens above, at the side of Jesus Christ; it is in order to separate us from the crowd of the children of Adam, above all the Caesars and kings of the earth, in that immortal society of the happy, who shall all be kings, and whose reign shall have no bounds but those of eternity.

What madness, then, to make no use of a treasure so inestimable; in frivolous amusements to waste that time which may be the price of eternal salvation, and to allow the hopes of our immortality to be dissipated in smoke ! Yes, my brethren, there is not a day, an hour, a moment, but which, properly employed, may merit us heaven. A single day lost ought therefore to leave us remorses a thousand times more lively and poignant than the failure of the greatest worldly prospects; yet, nevertheless, this time is a burden to us. Our whole life is only one continued science to lose it; and, in spite of all our anxieties to waste it, there always, however, remains more than we know how to employ; and yet, the thing upon the earth we have the smallest value for, is our time. Our acts of kindness we reserve for our friends; our bounties for our dependents; our riches for our children and relations; our praises for those who appear worthy of them: our time we give all to the world: we expose it, as I may say, a prey to all mankind; they even do us a pleasure in delivering us from it: it