Page:ThePathToHeaven.pdf/773

 +All things are clear and open to his eyes” (Hebrews vi),

“If you be determined to commit sin, seek first a place where God will not see you, and then do what you please” (St, Austin).

1. The affair of salvation is, properly speaking, the only business of man: every other concern, when compared with it, Should be accounted as nothing, The enterprises of kings, their negotiations, &c.,are as the amusements and the triffings of children, ‘The important, and the only affair, therefore, is to serve God, and thereby save our souls; the whole good, the whole perfeotion of man consists in this. It would be irrational, and, therefore, degrading to man, to neglect an affair whose consequences are so great, whose success is so uncertain, and whose loss is irreparable, What blindness! what folly! to think only of living, and not to think of living well! To apply so much time to making our fortune, and so little to the saving of our souls! What doth it avail a man to gain the whole world, and lose his soul?”

2. All creatures are made but for our salvation—they become useleas when not employed for that great end: so that from the Moment a man ceases to labour for his salvation, the sun also should cease to shine, the planets should stop in their course, the earth should no longer support him, the angels should abandon him; he should fall back into his original nothing, He is unworthy of life, when he liveth not for God,

3. However, the greater part of mankind think less of saving themselves than of any thing else. Every other business is carefully attended to, except the affair of salvation. All other concerns are turned to account. This sum of money must be put out to interest—this field must be tilled—these lands must be let at a more considerable rent. All other losses are bewailed, except the one without resource. Great expenses are incurred for the body, and nothing at all done for the soul. From the manner in which we live, it would seem that our soul does not really belong to us, but that it is the soul of our most mortal enemy, or the soul of some brute; or rather that we have souls just merely to destroy them.

[Make now s firm resolution to save your soul, let it cost you what pain it will; be of the same sentiment with a certain Pontiff, who, when a king had asked something of him which could not be granted without sin, replied: "If I had two souls I would give one of them to thee, O Prince! but as have only one, I do not choose to forfeit it."]

“Moreover one thing is necessary?" (Luke x.) "Where there is loss of salvation, there surely can be no gain” (St. Euch)

1. How great a lose is the loss of God! Men think themselves unfortunate when they lose all their possessions at law, or some other cause, What is it, then, to love an infinite God? Unhappy the soul which loses its God by sin: but far more unhappy the soul that considers this loss as nothing.

2. O sin! how common art thou among men; but how little.