Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/57

 may labour to acquire riches or earthly honours, or that we may indulge in amusements, but that we may love and serve him in this world, in order to love and enjoy him for eternity in the next. " And the end life ever lasting." (Rom. vi. 22.) Thus the present life, as St. Gregory says, is the way by which we must reach Paradise, our true country. " In the present life we are, as it were, on the road by which we journey to our country." (St. Greg. hom. xi. in Evan.)

5. But the misfortune of the greater part of mankind is, that instead of following the way of salvation, they foolishly walk in the road to perdition,. Some have a passion for earthly riches; and, for a vile interest, they lose the immense goods of Paradise: others have a passion for honours; and, for a momentary applause, they lose their right to be kings in Heaven: others have a passion for sensual pleasures; and, for transitory delights, they lose the grace of God, and are condemned to burn for ever in a prison of fire. Miserable souls! if, in punishment of a certain sin, their hand was to be burned with a red-hot iron, or if they were to be shut up for ten years in a dark prison, they certainly would abstain from it. And do they not know that, in chastisement of their sins, they shall be condemned to remain for ever in Hell, where their bodies, buried in fire, shall burn for all eternity? Some, says St. John Chrysostom (Hom. de recup. laps?), to save the body, choose to destroy the soul; but, do they not know that, in losing the soul, their bodies shall be condemned to eternal torments? " If we neglect the soul, we cannot save the body"

6. In a word, sinners lose their reason, and imitate brute animals, that follow the instinct of nature, and seek carnal pleasures without ever reflecting on their lawfulness or unlawfulness. But to act in this manner is, according to St. Chrysostom, to act not like a man, but like a beast. " Hominem ilium dicimus" says the saint, "qui imaginem hominis salvam retinet: qua autem est imago hominis! Rationalem esse" To be men we must be rational: that is, we must act, not according to the sensual appetite, but according to the dictates of reason. If God gave to beasts the use of reason, and it