ourselves in the way of wickedness and destruction; our passions have always been a thousand times more intolerable to us than could ever have been the most austere virtues: and we have suffered more in working our own destruction, than would have been necessary to secure our salvation, and to be entitled to mount up now with the chosen into the realms of immortality. Fools that we are! by a sorrowful and unhappy life to have purchased miseries which must endure for ever! "
Would you then, my dear hearer, live happy on the earth, live Christianly. Piety is universally beneficial. Innocence of heart is the source of true pleasures. Turn to every side; there is no rest, says the Spirit of God, for the wicked. Try every pleasure; they will never eradicate that disease of the mind, that fund of lassitude and gloom, which, go where you will, continually accompanies you. Cease, then, to consider the lot of the godly as a disagreeable and sorrowful lot; judge not their happiness from appearances which deceive you. You see their countenance bedewed with tears; but you see not the invisible hand which wipes them away; you see their body groaning under the yoke of penitence; but you see not the unction of grace which softens it: you see sorrowful and austere maimers; but you see not a conscience always cheerful and tranquil. They are like the ark in the desert: it appeared covered only with the skins of animals: the exterior is mean or unattractive; it is the condition of that melancholy desert. But, could you penetrate into the heart, into that divine sanctuary, what new wonders would rise to your eyes! You would find it clothed in pure gold: you would there see the glory of God with which it is filled: you would there admire the fragrance of the perfumes, and the fervour of the prayers which are continually mounting upwards to the Lord; the sacred fire which is never extinguished on that altar; that silence, that peace, that majesty which reigns there; and the Lord himself, who hath chosen it for his abode, and who hath delighted in it.
Let their lot inspire you with a holy emulation. It depends wholly on yourself to be similar to them. They perhaps have formerly been the accomplices of your pleasures; why could you not become the imitators of their penitence? Establish, at last, a solid peace in your heart; begin to be weary of yourself. Hitherto you have only half lived; for it is not living to live at enmity with one's self. Return to your God, who calls and who expects you: banish iniquity from your soul, and you will banish the source of all its sorrows; you will enjoy the peace of innocence; you will live happy upon the earth; and that temporal happiness will be only the commencement of a felicity which shall never fade nor be done away.
