that Christians continually justify their murmurs against the wisdom and the goodness of God, by accusing him of sending crosses incompatibJe with their eternal salvation. Nothing is more common, however, in the world, than this iniquitous language; and when we exhort the souls afflicted by God to convert these fleeting afflictions into the price of heaven and of eternity, they reply, that, in this state of distress, they are incapable of every thing; that the obstacles and vexations which they are continually encountering, far from recalling them to order and to duty, serve only to irritate the mind, and to harden the heart; and that tranquillity must be restored before they can turn their thoughts toward God.
Now, I say, that, of all the pretexts employed in justification of the unchristian use made of afflictions, this is the most absurd and the most culpable. The most culpable, for it is blaspheming Providence to pretend, that it places you in situations incompatible with your salvation. Whatever it doth or permitteth here below, it only doth or permitteth in order to facilitate to men the ways of eternal life: every event, prosperous or unprosperous, in the measure of our lot, is meant by it as a mean of salvation, and of sanctification; all its designs upon us tend to that sole purpose; whatever we are, even in the order of nature, our birth, our fortune, our talents, our age, our dignities, our protectors, our subjects, our masters! — all this, in its views of mercy upon us, enters into the impenetrable designs of our eternal sanctification. All this visible world itself is made only for the age to come; whatever passeth, hath its secret connexions with that eternal age, where things shall pass no more; whatever we see, is only the image and trust of the invisible things. The world is worthy of the cares of a wise and merciful God, only inasmuch as, by secret and adorable relations, its diverse revolutions are to form that heavenly church, that immortal assembly of chosen, where he shall ever be glorified. To pretend, then, that he placeth us in situations, which not only have no relation to, but are even incompatible with our eternal interests, is to make a temporal God of him, and to blaspheme his adorable wisdom.
But, not only nothing is more culpable than this pretext, — I say, likewise, that nothing is more foolish: for, it is only by detaching itself from this miserable world, that a soul returns to God; and nothing, says St. Augustine, so effectually detaches from this miserable world, as when the Lord sheddeth salutary sorrows over its dangerous pleasures. "Lord," said a holy king of Judah, (iI had neglected thee in prosperity and in abundance; the pleasures of royalty, and the splendour of a long and glorious reign, had corrupted my heart: the flatteries and the deceitful words of the wicked had lulled me into a profound and a fatal sleep; but thine hand hath been upon me, in pouring out upon my people all the scourges of thy wrath, in raising up against me mine own children and subjects, whom I loaded with favours; and I awoke. Thou hast humbled me, and I have had recourse to thee; thou hast afflicted me, and I have sought thee, and I have found out that I
