to it with delight. When all is over, and we no longer know how to fill up our vacant hours, we then consecrate to some languid practices of religion those outcast moments which weariness or a deficiency of pleasures leaves us: properly speaking, they are moments of recreation which we bestow upon ourselves rather than upon God; an interval we place between the world and us, in order to return to it with more relish, and breathe a little from the fatigue, the disgust, and the satiety which are the necessary consequences of a life devoted to the world and pleasures, which, prolonged beyond a certain measure, are immediately followed by weariness and lassitude.
Such is the use which even persons who deck themselves out with a reputation for virtue make of their time. Their whole life is one continued and criminal preference given to the world, fortune, ceremony, and pleasures, above the business of their salvation; all is filled up by what they give to their masters, friends, places, and appetites, and nothing remains for God and for eternity. It would appear that time is given to us, in the first place, for the world, ambition, and earthly cares; and should any portion of it happen afterward to remain, that we are entitled to praise when we bestow it on our salvation.
Great God! for what purpose dost thou leave us on the earth but to render ourselves worthy of thine eternal possession? Every thing we do for the world shall perish with it; whatsoever we do for thee shall be immortal. All our cares and attentions here are in general for masters, ungrateful, unjust, difficult to please, weak, and incapable of rendering us happy. The duties we render to thee are given to a Lord and Master, faithful, just, compassionate, almighty, and who alone can recompense those who serve him. The cares of the earth, however brilliant, are foreign to us; they are unworthy of us; it is not for them we are created; we ought only to devote ourselves to them as they pass, in order to satisfy the transitory ties they exact from us, and which connect us with mankind: the cares of eternity alone are worthy of the nobility of our hopes, and fill all the grandeur and dignity of our destiny. Without the cares of salvation, those of this earth are profane and sullied; they are no longer but vain, fruitless, and almost always criminal agitations. The cares of salvation alone consecrate and sanctify them, give to them reality, elevation, the price and the merit which they wanted. All other cares wound, trouble, harden, and render us miserable, but the duties we render to thee leave us a real and heartfelt joy: they strengthen, calm, and console us, and even soften the anguish and bitterness of the others. In a word, we owe ourselves to thee, O my God! before masters, superiors, friends, or connexions. Thou alone hast the first right over our hearts and reason, which are the gifts of thy liberal hand; it is for thee, therefore, that in the first place we ought to make use of them; and we are Christians before we are princes, subjects, public characters, or any thing else on the earth.
You will perhaps tell us, my brethren, that, in fulfilling the pain-
