to be accepted of Thee as a son. I am, indeed, not worthy thus to be called, because so often I have insulted Thee to Thy face. " Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am. not worthy to be called Thy son." But I know that Thou searchest out the lost sheep, and that Thy consolation is to embrace Thy lost children. My dear Father, I repent that I have offended Thee, I cast myself at and I embrace Thy feet, and I will not go if Thou dost not pardon and bless me. " I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me." Bless me, O my Father, and may Thy blessing give me great grief for my sins, and great love towards Thee. I love Thee, O my Father, I love Thee with all my heart. Do not allow me to be separated from Thee again; deprive me of all things, save of Thy love.
Second Point.
Poor sinners! They toil, they weary themselves to acquire earthly knowledge or the art of gaining the good things of this life which have to end in a short time; whilst they neglect the good things of that life which shall never end. They lose their reason in such wise that they become not fools only, but brute beasts; and so living, they do not consider what is good and what is evil, but they follow the brutish instincts of sense, alone embracing that which of the present is pleasing to the flesh, without thinking of what they lose, and of that eternal ruin which they have drawn down upon themselves this is to act like brutes, not like men. S. Chrysostom says, " We call him a man who preserves intact the image of man. But what is the image of man? To be rational." To be a man is to be rational, that is, to act according to reason and not according to sensual appetite. If God were to give a beast the use of reason, and it were to act according to reason, we should say it acted like a man; so, on the other hand, when man acts according to sense, contrary to reason, we say, that man acts like a beast.
" Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! " (Deut. xxxii. 29.) He who acts with prudence, according to reason, foresees the future, which is what must follow at the end of life, death, judgment, and
