Q. What is actual sin?
A. Actual sin is any wilful thought, word, deed, or omission contrary to the law of God.
When will there be War again?
The sins of nations are followed by national calamities. In the year 1870, as is well known, France and Germany were at war. On the conclusion of hostilities, when the German army evacuated France, a French officer contemptuously asked a German officer, when another invasion might be looked for. He answered: “ That will probably be when the sins of France are greater than those of Germany.” Nations are punished in time by temporal misery.
Q. How many kinds of actual sin are there?
A. There are two kinds of actual sin — mortal and venial.
An Artificer is Instrumental in his Own Death
We ought not to take part in reprehensible transactions. Phelaris, the tyrant of Agrigentum, once commissioned an artificer to cast a metal bull of which the body should be hollow, so that if a man were shut up in it and a fire lighted underneath, he should be slowly burned to death. Accordingly the worker in metals manufactured this instrument of torture, and fashioned it in such a manner that it should bellow horribly if the unhappy victim inclosed within it uttered cries or groans. The first individual
