ner, in proportion as sin degenerates into habit, the light of God retires, darkness gains, and the profound night of total blindness at last arrives.
And then all becomes occasion of error to the criminal soul; all changes its aspect to his eyes; the most shameful passions no longer appear but as weaknesses; the most criminal attachments but sympathies brought with us into the world and inherent to our hearts; the excesses of the table but innocent pleasures of society; revenge but a just sense of injury; licentious and impious conversations but lively and agreeable sallies; the blackest defamation but a customary language, of which none but weak and timid minds can make a scruple; the laws of the church but old-fashioned customs; the severity of God's judgments but absurd declamations which equally disgrace his goodness and mercy; death in sin, the inevitable consequence of a criminal life, mere predictions in which there is more of zeal than of truth, and refuted by the confidence which a return to God, previous to that last moment, promises to us: lastly, heaven, the earth, hell, all creatures, religion, crimes, virtues, good and evil, things present and to come, all change their aspect to the eyes of a soul who lives in habitual guilt; all show themselves under false appearances; his whole life is no longer but a delusion and a continued error. Alas! could you tear away the fatal veil which covers your eyes, like those of Lazarus, and behold yourself, like him, buried in darkness, all covered with putrefaction, and spreading around infection and a smell of death! But now, says our Saviour, all these things are hid from thine eyes; you see in yourself only the embellishments and the pompous externals of the fatal tomb in which you drag on in sin; your rank, your birth, your talents, your dignities, your titles, that is to say, the trophies, and the ornaments which the vanity of men has there raised up; but, remove the stone which covers that place of horror; look within, judge not of yourself from these pompous outsides, which serve only to embellish your carcass; see what, in the eyes of God, you are; and if the corruption and the profound blindness of your soul touch you not, let its slavery at least rouse and recall you to yourself.
Last circumstance of the situation of Lazarus dead and buried; he was bound hand and foot: and behold the image of the wretched slavery of a soul long under the dominion of sin.
Yes, my brethren, in vain does the world decry a Christian life as a life of subjection and slavery. The reign of righteousness is a reign of liberty; the soul, faithful and submissive to God, becomes master over all creatures; the just man is above all, because he is unconnected with all; he is master of the world, because he despises the world; he is dependent neither on his masters, because he only serves them for God; nor on his friends, because he only loves them according to the order of charity and of righteousness; nor on his inferiors, because he exacts from them no iniquitous compliance; nor on his fortune, because he rather dreads it; nor on the judgments of men, because he dreads those of God
