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guished by the choicest gifts of nature and of grace, countless in number, and who, had it been permitted to them to do penance, would have for evermore loved their Creator with a most intense and eternal love, and would have expiated their crime by a never-ending and most poignant sorrow.

3. Reflect why it was that God, so merciful and so wise, punished such an immense number of noble spirits, and punished them all, without even a solitary exception. Why? For one (ah! be terrified, O ye heavens, and let the earth be shaken with fear to its very foundations), for a single mortal sin: for one their first. committed in a single

only. instant

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and only in thought.

4. Reflect in what manner God punished the angels for this one sin. Ah! He inflicted on them a punishment extreme in its intensity, eternal in its duration; or (as the schools say) finite in its intensity, but, nevertheless, infinite in its extension, and of such nature that (taking into account the pain of loss) the avenging Omnipotence of God could inflict no greater.

5. Consider when it was that God so punished them. It was at a time when there did not as yet exist any example of punishment to forewarn them: when no admonition, no threat of chastisement, had preceded their crime. They had not seen the earth submerged by the waters of the Deluge, nor Sodom destroyed by the fire which rained from heaven, nor Jesus Christ expiring upon the Cross because of sin. And yet, all of them-not merely one in ten-all of them without exception were precipitated into the abyss, precipitated suddenly, with the rapidity of the lightning's flash, in the very same instant that

they sinned, without being allowed even one brief moment to repent.

Ah! the third part of those noble and countless angelic hosts, who had sinned but once, and that in thought; who had no examples before them to inspire them with terror, and no time given them for repentance the angels (tremble, sinful man!) for their first and only sin a sin of thought

committed in an instant were hurled into IIell; that is, into a place of torments, countless in their number, terrible in their intensity, and in their duration eternal. And they were consigned to this dread abode by a Judge of infinite justice, wisdom, sanctity, and mercy. O sin! what a horrible monster, then, and how detestable must thou be: and yet, the blind perversity of man regards thee as a thing of nothing-a mere trifle. Oh, what a terrible evil thou art, deserving to be wept with tears of blood! thou who hast drawn sinners away from their last end-which is the infinite good-into the depths of every misery. Now, tell me, reader, what conclusions do you draw from all this?

First conclusion. Wherefore, sin is to be avoided and detested with a most intense hatred and horror. Perhaps you would call this into question? But "if God spared not the angels that sinned: but delivered them, drawn down by infernal ropes to the lower hell, unto torments" (a), by what means do you hope to be spared?—you, who are but the slime of the earth; you, who have committed not one sin alone, but so many and such grievous transgressions; and have repeated them after having been so many

(a) 2 Peter ii. 4.

times pardoned, and after having witnessed so many examples of punishment, inflicted by the terrible justice of God. Wherefore, moved by a due dread of such punishment, tremble, and "flee from sins as from the face of a serpent" (a).

For, that Hell into which the rebel angels were hurled still burns, and burns for you also .. Yes! for you also. That same God who pardoned not the angels still exists, and is equally just, holy and powerful, now as then. He exists! Ah yes! He does exist, and woe to you should He strike you with death, at a moment when you are in the state of mortal sin. If He pardoned not the angelic spirits, so noble and so numerous, much less will His avenging justice spare you-a vile, worthless worm of the earth. Wherefore be afraid, fly from, and

abhor, sin.

Second conclusion. The malice of mortal sin being so great as to provoke the anger of God in such a degree, it follows that we ought to grieve for sin with a most intense sorrow. You have sinned, unhappy wretch! you have sinned: your conscience proclaims this to you in unmistakable accents : therefore, you have merited Hell, as you know from the teachings of faith. If death had surprised you on that day, at that hour, at that moment when you sinned, alas! where would you be at present! Ah! at this very moment you would "dwell with devouring fire" (b), and you would have to dwell there for

ever.

Here reflect. God punished the angels. He has pardoned you. He" delivered them, drawn down by

(a) Ecclesiasticus xxi. 2.

(b) Isaias xxxiii. 14.

infernal ropes to the lower hell, unto torments," while He has granted to you time for repentance. You sinned once, twice, a third time-and yet God pardoned you. You sinned a fourth time, and the fourth time God pardoned you. You sinned a tenth and a twentieth time, and even the twentieth time God pardoned you. Your life has been one continued sin, and yet God has continued to forgive you. He did not delay one instant in hurling the angels into Hell for all eternity, after their first and only sin, and that a sin but in thought; and in His great patience, He has forgiven you-a miserable, vile, ungrateful creature-hundreds of most heinous crimes.

Do you not, then, recognise at length the infinite goodness of the divine mercy towards you? Are you not lost in amazement, when you consider the immense affection which God has borne towards you in comparison with so many others? Ah! you have not a human heart if at this thought you do not burst forth with sighs and lamentations, if your eyes do not dissolve themselves in floods of tears, and your entire soul melt in the flame of reciprocal love. Wherefore excite within yourself most heartfelt sentiments of sorrow and detestation for sin; grieving most intensely for past sins, and most firmly resolving to avoid all future ones. Let grief for sins past, and a horror of future sins be the fruit you will gather from this meditation.

SECOND POINT.

Consider the punishment inflicted on our first parents, because through sin they strayed away from their last end; inasmuch as, through the absence of the spirit of indifference, they did not remain con

tent with their actual condition, desiring to be " as gods, knowing good and evil” (a). They wished, it is true, to serve God, but to do so in a more elevated sphere than He had appointed for them, and to gain which they employed means which had been forbidden them. Scarcely, however, had they tasted the forbidden fruit when

1. They are instantly stripped of original justice, and of that dominion which they had previously. exercised over the brute creation and their own rebellious appetites; and, exiled from Paradise, they are driven out into this vale of tears, without ever a hope of return. Nor did the evil consequences of their great fault end here, but its poison was transmitted, also, to their posterity.

2. That you may realise this the better, represent to yourself all the accumulated miseries that ever have been, or shall be: all the pestilences, famines, conflagrations, shipwrecks, and wars that have ever occurred; all the ruin and devastation of so many cities, provinces, kingdoms, and empires, which are chronicled in the world's history; all the inundations of rivers and seas which have happened from time to time; the sufferings consequent on the winter's colds and the summer heats; all the ailments, the pains and the torments of the countless beings who have ever been tried by sickness, and even of the martyrs themselves; in a word, all the calamities and miseries which, like a deluge, have inundated, still inundate, and shall continue to inundate the earth. Add to this the lot of the many hundreds of millions of children who, by dying without baptism, have

(a) Genesis iii. 5.

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