Page:Sermons by John-Baptist Massillon.djvu/237

 straint; forsake  it  on  the  first  symptom  of  disgust;  make  no  exertion to  reduce  and  familiarize  their  mind  to  it;  and  far  from  considering prayer  as  being  rendered  only  more  necessary  to  them,  by their  invincible  repugnance  to  it,  they  regard  that  very  repugnance as a  legal  excuse,  which  dispenses  them  altogether  from  it.

But how  find  time  in  the  world,  you  will  say,  to  make  so  long and so  frequent  a  use  of  prayer? You, my  dear  hearer,  not  find time to  pray? But wherefore  is  time  given  to  you,  but  to  entreat of God  to  forget  your  crimes,  to  look  upon  you  with  eyes  of  compassion, and  to  place  you  one  day  among  the  number  of  his  holy? You have  not  time  to  pray? But you  have  not  time,  then,  to  be  a Christian;  for,  a  man  who  prays  not,  is  a  man  who  has  no  God, no worship,  and  no  hope. You have  not  time  to  pray? But prayer is  the  beginning  of  all  good;  and  if  you  do  not  pray,  you  have not yet  performed  a  single  work  for  eternal  life. Ah! my brethren, is time  for  ever  wanting  to  solicit  the  favours  of  the  earth,  to  importune the  master,  to  besiege  those  who  are  in  place,  to  bestow upon pleasures,  or  upon  idleness? What useless  moments! What languid and  tiresome  days,  through  the  mere  gloom  which  ever  accompanies idleness! What time  lost  in  vain  ceremonials,  in  idle conversations, in  boundless  gaming,  in  fruitless  subjections,  in grasping  at  chimeras  which  move  farther  and  farther  from  us! Great God! and time  is  wanted  to  ask  heaven  of  thee,  to  appease thy wrath,  and  to  supplicate  thine  eternal  mercies! How humbly, O my  God,  must  salvation  be  estimated,  when  time  is  wanted  to entreat  of  thy  mercy  to  save  us! And how  much  are  we  to  be  deplored, to  find  so  many  moments  for  the  world,  and  to  be  unable  to find  a  single  one  for  eternity! Second cause  of  the  disgusts  and  of the  wanderings  of  your  prayers — the  little  use  of  prayer  itself.

It is  true,  my  brethren,  that  this  reason  is  not  so  general  but that souls,  the  most  faithful  to  prayer,  are  often  seen  to  experience all those  disgusts  and  those  wanderings  of  which  I  speak! but, I say,  that  these  disgusts  proceed  from  the  wisdom  of  God,  who means to  purify  them,  and  who  leads  them  by  that  path,  only  in order  to  fulfil  his  eternal  designs  of  mercy  upon  them. Last reason— that  consequently,  far  from  being  repulsed  by  what  they  find gloomy and  disagreeable  in  prayer,  they  ought  to  persevere  in  it with  even  more  fidelity  than  if  the  Lord  had  shed  upon  them  the most abundant  and  the  most  sensible  consolations.

First. Because you  ought  to  consider  these  disgusts  as  the  just punishment of  your  past  infidelities. Is it  not  reasonable  that  God make you  expiate  the  criminal  voluptuousness  of  your  worldly  life by the  disgusts  and  the  sorrows  of  piety? Weakness of  temperament does  not  perhaps  permit  you  to  punish,  by  corporeal  sufferings, the  licentiousness  of  your  past  manners:  is  it  not  just  that God supply  that,  by  the  punishment,  and  the  inward  afflictions  of the  mind? Would you  pretend  to  pass  in  an  instant  from  the  pleasures of  the  world  to  those  of  grace;  from  the  viands  of  Egypt  to the  milk  and  honey  of  the  land  of  promise,  without  the  Lord  having first  made  you  to  undergo  the  barrenness  and  the  fatigues  of