and to make choice of another, for which no person can be answerable to you.
Lastly. I do not tell you that, the Gospel having been only given to us in order to detach us from the world and from ourselves, and to make us die to all our terrestrial affections, it is deceiving ourselves to consider, as inconveniencies, certain consequences of that divine law, fatal either to our fortune, to our glory, or to our ease, and to persuade ourselves that it is then permitted to us to have recourse to expedients which mollify it, and conciliate its severity with the interests of our self-love. Jesus Christ hath never meant to prescribe to us easy and commodious duties, and which take nothing from the passions; he came to bring the sword and separation to hearts, to divide man from his relations, from his friends, from himself; to hold out to us a way rugged and difficult to keep. Thus, what we call inconveniencies and unheard-of extremities, are, at bottom, only the spirit of the law, the most natural consequences of the rules, and the end that Jesus Christ hath intended in prescribing them to us.
That young man of the Gospel regarded, as an inconveniency, the being unable to go to pay the last duties to his father, and to gather in what he had succeeded to, if he followed Jesus Christ; and it was precisely that sacrifice which Jesus Christ exacted of him. Those men invited to the feast looked upon as an inconveniency, the one to forsake his country-house, the other his trade, the last to delay his marriage; and it was in order to break asunder all these ties, which bound them still too much to the earth, that the father of the family invited them to come and seat themselves at the feast. Esther, at first, considered as an inconveniency to go to appear before Ahasuerus, contrary to the law of the empire, and to declare herself a daughter of Abraham, and protectress of the children of Israel; and, nevertheless, as the wise Mordecai represented to her, the Lord had raised her to that point of glory and prosperity only for that important occasion. Whatever is a constraint to us, appears a reason against the law; and we take for inconveniencies the obligations themselves.
Besides, my brethren, is it not certain that the principal merit of our duties is derived from the obstacles which never fail to oppose their practice; that the most essential character of the law of Jesus Christ is that of exciting against it all the reasons of flesh and blood; and virtue would resemble vice, if outwardly and inwardly it found in us only facilities and conveniencies? The righteous, my brethren, have never been peaceable observers of the holy rules. Abel found inconveniencies in the jealousy of his own brother; Noah, in the unbelief of his own citizens; Abraham in the disputes of his servants; Joseph in the dangers to which he was exposed through his love of modesty and the rage of a faithless woman; Daniel in the customs of a profane court; the pious Esdras in the manners of the age; the noble Eleazar in the snares of a specious temperament: lastly, follow the history of the just, and you will see that, in all ages, all those who have walked in the
