tion of the days which you have employed in offending him; they will be as though they had never been: from the moment that you shall begin to serve him, you will begin to increase before him; a thousand years are only a day in his eyes, from the moment that your crimes are terminated by a sincere change: he is the God of sinners, the Benefactor of the ungrateful, the Father of prodigal children, the Shepherd of strayed sheep, the friend of Samaritans; in a word, all the consolations of faith seem to be for the repentant sinner.
But if you continue to promise yourself, that, at last, the time will come, when you shall seriously think upon your salvation without doing it still; ah! remember, my dear hearer, that it is in that very way that almost all sinners have perished, and that it is the high-road to death in sin. Remember, that the sinner who often vainly desires is never converted. Even the more you feel within you these unproductive impulses of salvation, depend upon it that the more is your measure filled, and that every rejected grace draws you a degree nearer to hardness of heart: comfort yourself not upon desires which hasten your ruin, and which, in all times, have been the lot of the reprobate; and say often to the Lord, with the prophet, How long, O my God! shall I amuse the secret anxieties of my soul with vain projects of penitence? How long shall I see my days flowing rapidly on in promising to my heart, in order to quiet it in its disorders, a sorrow and a repentance which are more and more distant from me? How long shall the enemy, taking advantage of my weakness, employ so gross an error to seduce me? Ah! dissipate this illusion which leads me astray; regard these feeble desires of salvation as the cries of a conscience which cannot be happy without thee; accept these timid beginnings of penitence; favourably attend to them now, O my God! when to me it seems that thy grace renders them more lively and more sincere; and complete, by thy inward operation, what is yet wanting to the fulness and to the sincerity of this offer; and perfect, in receiving, my desires, in order that they be worthy of the reward which thou promisest to those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Hear, said the Lord in his prophet, to the unfaithful soul, you who live in ease and in pleasures, and who nevertheless hope in me, sterility and widowhood shall at once burst upon your heads; sterility, that is to say, that you shall no longer be fit to bear the fruits of penitence; cultivation and watering shall be in vain; the power of my word, the virtue of my sacraments, the grace of my mysteries, all care shall be unavailing, and you shall no longer be but a withered tree alloted to the fire: widowhood, that is to say, I will for ever forsake you; I will leave you single; I will deliver you up to your inclinations, and to the false peace of your passions; I will no longer be your God, your protector, your spouse; I will for ever forsake you.
But may I here finish my ministry, my brethren, with the words formerly made use of by Jesus Christ, in finishing his mission to
