after that, heaven or hell. Oh how much wiser is the peasant who saves his soul, than the king who loses it! " Better is a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished." (Eccles. iv. 13.) O God! would he not be accounted mad by all, who, to gain more present pleasures, risks the loss of all his goods? And he, who for one brief satisfaction, loses his soul and risks its loss for ever shall we not hold him to be foolish? This causes the ruin of so many souls which are lost the care for present goods and ills alone, and the carelessness for those which are eternal.
God has certainly not placed us in the world to grow rich, to gain honours, or to gratify our senses, but to obtain eternal life; " And the end everlasting life." (Rom. vi. 22.) To follow this ought to be our aim; " One thing is needful." (S. Luke x. 42.) But this end is that which sinners most despise; they think only of the present, they walk down to death, they approach the threshold of eternity, and they know not where they go. S. Augustine asks, " What would you say to a pilot, who, being asked where he was going, said that he did not know?" would not every one exclaim " This fellow steers the ship to destruction!" " Such an one," he concluded, "is he who runs out of the way." Such are these wise ones of the world, who know how to amass wealth, to follow pleasures, to obtain places; but who do not know, how to save the soul. The glutton was wise in making riches, but " he died, and was buried, and in hell he lifted up his eyes." (S. Luke xvi. 22, 23.) Alexander the Great was wise in acquiring so many kingdoms, but after a few years he died and was lost for ever. How many miserable ones now weep and cry in hell, " What hath pride profited us? and what advantage hath the hoarding of riches brought us? All those things are passed away like a shadow." (Wisd. v. 8, 9.) As a shadow they are gone, and nought remains of them now, but weeping and eternal suffering.
" Before man is life and death, and good and evil, that which he shall choose shall be given him." (Ecclus. xv. 18.) My fellow Christian, in this life are placed before you life and death, that is, either to deprive yourself of the pleasures of this life to gain life eternal, or to accept them with death eternal. What do you
