selves embarrassed with the little you are left? God will judge you, my brethren; and on the bed of death, and in that terrible hour which shall surprise you, in vain shall you demand a little more time; in vain shall you promise to God a more Christian use of what you will endeavour to obtain: his justice, without pity, will cut the thread of your days; and that time, which now oppresses and embarrasses you, shall then be denied.
But in what our blindness here is still more conspicuous, is, that not only the time which we lose with so much indifference and insensibility, is short and precious, but likewise irreparable; for, once lost, it is for ever gone, without resource.
I say irreparable: for, in the first place, riches, honours, reputation, and favour, though once lost, may again be retrieved. We may even replace each of these losses by other acquirements, which will repay us with usury; but the moments lost in inutility are so many means of salvation which we never again can possess, but which are for ever cut off from the number which God, in his compassion, had allotted to us. Indeed, in a space so short as we have to live, there cannot be a doubt but that the Almighty had his particular designs with jregard to each of our days and moments; that he hath marked the use we ought to have made of them; the connexion they were to have with our eternal salvation; and that, to each of them, he hath attached assistances of grace, in order to consummate the work of our sanctification. Now, these days and moments being lost, the grace attached to them must be equally so; the moments of God are finished, and return no more: the course of his mercies is regulated: we believed they were only useless moments we had lost; and with them we have lost inestimable succours of grace, which we find deducted from those the goodness of God had destined for us.
In the second place, irreparable, because every day, every moment, ought to advance us a step nearer heaven. Now, the days and moments lost leaving us in arrear, and the duration of our course being also determined, the end arrives when we are yet at a distance; when there is no longer time to supply the remainder of the career; or, at least, to regain the lost moments, and reach the goal, we must double our speed; — in one day fill up the course of many years; make the most heroic exertions; and hasten in a degree even beyond our strength; — proceed to excesses of holiness, which are miracles of grace, and of which the generality of men are incapable; and consummate, in a small interval, what ought to be the labour of a whole life.
In the last place, irreparable, with respect to the works of penance and reparation, of which, in a certain period of life, we are capable, but are no longer so, when we wait the infirmities of a more advanced age. For, after all, it is in vain to say then, that God expects not impossibilities; that there is a penance for every age; and that religion does not wish us to hasten our days, under the pretext of expiating our crimes. It is you who have placed yourselves in this state of impossibility: your sins diminish not
