love of Thee, Who has so greatly loved me, and Who hast with so much patience borne with me, and Who now, instead of chastising me, encirclest me with light and grace. I thank Thee for these, O my Jesus. I love Thee: I love Thee more than myself, I love Thee with my whole heart. Thou knowest not how to despise one who loves Thee. I love Thee. " Cast me not, away from Thy presence." Receive me, then, into Thy grace, and suffer me not again to lose Thee. O my Jesus, accept me as Thy servant and bind me to Thyself; pardon me, give me Thy love and the grace of perseverance until death.
Second Point.
S. Thomas Aquinas says that the lost " will chiefly grieve that they have been condemned for nothing, and yet most easily they could have obtained eternal life. The second remorse of conscience will be the thought, of how little was required to obtain salvation. The greatest torment in hell to the lost soul will be the thought, for what trifles it has lost itself, and how little there, was to do that it might have been saved. Then will the soul say: " Had I mortified myself by not looking at that object; had I conquered that undue deference to human opinion; had I fled from that temptation, that companion, that assembly, I should not have been condemned. If I had confessed every week, been diligent in the discharge of my religious duties, and read daily such a spiritual book; had I commended myself to Jesus Christ, I should not have become a lapsed one. Very often I resolved to do all this, but I did not carry out my resolution, or, at least, I began to do so, and I failed; and so I am lost."
The examples which he will have had of other holy friends and companions will increase his remorse, and the good gifts which God has granted to him for salvation will increase it still farther; the gifts of nature likewise, of good health, of fortune, of ability, which the Lord had given to employ well, and to make him holy; gifts, moreover, of grace, so great lights, inspirations, calls, and so many years granted to remedy the sin; but he will see that, in that miserable state at which he has now arrived, there is no more time for remedy. He will hear the
