present gratifications, but that he sometimes gives a look back to those years of iniquity which he amasses behind him. Those days of darkness, which he has consecrated to debauchery, have not so completely perished, but that, in certain moments, they obtrude themselves upon his remembrance. Gloomy and troublesome images force themselves upon his soul, and, from time to time, arouse him from his lethargy by holding out, as if collected into one point, that shocking mass of crimes which make less impression, during their commission, because he only sees them in succession. At one glance of his eye he sees favours always contemned, inspirations always rejected, a vile perversion of a disposition naturally good and originally formed, it appears, for virtue; weaknesses at which he now blushes, phantoms and horrors against which he would wish for ever to shut his eyes.
Such is what the sinner leaves behind him. He is miserable if he looks back to the past. His whole happiness is, as it were, shut up in the present moment; and, to be happy, he must never think, but allow himself, like the dumb creation, to be led away by the attraction of the present objects; and, to preserve his tranquillity, he must either extinguish or brutify his reason. And thence those maxims so unworthy of humanity, and so circulated in the world, that too much reason is a sorry advantage; that reflection spoils all the pleasures of life; and that, to be happy, the less we think the better. O man! was it for thy misery, then, that Heaven had given thee that reason by which thou art enlightened, or to assist thee in search of the truth, which alone can render thee happy? Could that divine light which embellishes thy being, be a punishment rather than a gift of the Creator? And should it so gloriously distinguish thee from the beast, only that thy condition may be more wretched?
Yes, my brethren, such is the lot of an unbelieving soul. Intoxication, delirium of passion, and the extinction of all reason, alone can render him happy; and, as that situation is merely momentary, the instant the mind becomes calm and regains itself, the charm ceases, happiness takes wing, and man finds himself alone with his conscience and his crimes.
But how different, O my God, is the lot of a soul who walks in thy ways, and how much to be pitied is the world which knows thee not? In effect, the sweetest thoughts of a righteous soul are those by which the past is recalled. He there encounters, it is true, that portion of his life which had been engrossed by the world and the passions: and the remembrance, I confess, fills him with shame before the sanctity of his God, and forces from him tears of compunction and sorrow. But what consolation in his tears and in his grief!
For, my brethren, a contrite soul can never retrace the whole train of his past errors, without discovering all the proceedings of God's mercy upon him: the singular ways by which his wisdom hath gradually, and, as it were, step by step, couducted him to the blessed moment of his conversion: so many unexpected favourable
