can render him the happiest of kings. He is thereby great: but he is not thereby happy. His felicity has commenced with his piety. Whatever does not sanctify man, can never make the happiness of man. Whatever does not place thee, O my God! in a heart, places only vanities which leave it empty, or real evils which fill it with disquiet; and a pure conscience is the only resource of real enjoyments.
It is to this truth that the church, on the occasion of this solemnity, confines its whole fruit. As the common error, that the life of the saints has been gloomy and disagreeable, is one of the principal artifices employed by the world in order to prevent us from imitating them, the church, in renewing their memory on this day, gives us to remember, at the same time, that not only they now enjoy an immortal felicity in heaven, but also that they have been the only happy of the earth, and that he who carries iniquity in his bosom always carries terror and anxiety: and that the lot of the godly is a thousand times more tranquil and more satisfactory, even in this world, than that of sinners.
But in what does the happiness of the just in this life consist? It consists, first, in the manifestation of truth concealed from the sages of the world. Secondly, in the relish of charity denied to the lovers of the world. In the lights of faith which soften all the sufferings of the believing soul, and which render those of the sinner still more bitter: this is my first point. In the comforts of grace which calm all the passions, and which, denied to a corrupted heart, leave it a prey to itself, is the last. Let us examine these two truths, so calculated to render virtue amiable and the example of the saints beneficial.
Part I. — Our sorrows proceed, in general, from our errors; and we are unhappy only because we are inadequate judges of what is really good and evil. The just, who are children of light, are, therefore, much happier than sinners, because they are more enligntened. The same lights which correct their judgments alleviate their suffering; and faith, which shows the world to them such as it is, changes, into sources of consolation for them, the very same events in which souls, delivered up to the passions, find the principle of all their disquiets.
And, in order to make you sensible of a truth so honourable to virtue, observe, I pray you my brethren, that, whether a contrite soul recall the past, and those times of error which preceded his penitence; whether he pay attention to what passes before his eyes in the world; or, lastly, whether he look forward to the future, every thing consoles, every thing strengthens him in the cause of virtue which he has adopted, every thing unites in rendering his condition infinitely more pleasing than that of a soul who lives in dissipation, and who finds, in these three situations, only bitterness and inward terrors.
For, in the first place, however the sinner may be delivered up to all fervency of his heart, he is not so violently hurried away, by
