Page:Sermons by John-Baptist Massillon.djvu/28

 consider as an amusement: we toil for frivolous riches, as if we laboured for eternal possessions; we labour for eternal possessions, as if we toiled for frivolous riches.

Yes, my brethren, our cares for this world are always animated; obstacles, fatigues, disappointments, nothing can repulse us: our cares for this world are always prudent; dangers, snares, perplexities, competitions, nothing can make us mistake our aim: whereas, our cares for salvation bear a very different character ; nothing can be more languid, or less interesting to us, although obstacles and disgusts there, are so much to be dreaded; nothing can be more inconsiderate, although the multiplicity of ways and the number of rocks for us to split upon, render mistakes in it so familiar and common.

We must labour, therefore, toward its accomplishment, with fervour and prudence: with fervour, in order not to be repulsed; with prudence in order not to be mistaken.

P - Undoubtedly nothing in this life ought to interest us more than the care of our eternal salvation. Besides that this is the grand affair upon which our all depends, we even have not, properly speaking, any other upon the earth; and the infinite and divers occupations attached to our places, to our rank, to our situations in life, ought to be only different modes of labouring toward our salvation.

Nevertheless, this care so glorious, to which every thing we do, and whatever we are, relate, is of all others the most despised; this chief care, which should be at the head of all our other pursuits, give place to them all in the detail of our actions; this care so amiable, and to which the promises of faith, and the consolations of grace, attach so many comforts, is of all others become for us the most disgusting, and the most melancholy. And, behold, my brethren, from whence springs this want of fervour in the business of our eternal salvation; we pursue it without esteem, without preference, and without inclination. Let us investigate and illustrate these ideas.

It is a very deplorable error, that mankind has attached the most pompous names to all the enterprises of the passions; and that the cares of our salvation have not, in the opinions of men, been capable of meriting the same honour and the same esteem. Military toils are regarded by us as the path of reputation and glory; the intrigues and the commotions which contribute to our advancement in the world, are looked upon as the secrets of a profound wisdom; schemes and negotiations which arm mankind against each other, and which frequently make the ambition of an individual the source of public calamities, pass for extent of genius and superiority of talents; the art of raising, from an obscure patrimony, a monstrous and overgrown fortune, at the expense often of justice and probity, is the science of business and individual good management. In a word, the world has found out a secret of setting off, by honourable titles, all the