corruption said the apostle, you will cut down in corruption. You are continually saying, yourselves, that we always die as we have lived; that the character and disposition change not; that we bear within us in old age all the defects and all the tendencies of our younger years; and that nothing is so fortunate for us as to have formed laudable inclinations from an early period, and, as the prophet said, to have accustomed ourselves from the tenderest youth to bear the yoke of the Lord.
And, in effect, when we should attend solely to the quiet of our life, when we should have no other interest in view than that of securing peaceful and happy days to ourselves here below, what happiness to anticipate, and to stifle in their birth, by bending from the first toward virtue, so many violent passions which afterward tear the heart, and occasion all the sorrows and misery of our life! What happiness to have grafted in ourselves only gentle and innocent ideas, to spare ourselves the fatal experience of so many criminal pleasures, which for ever corrupt the heart, defile the imagination, engender a thousand shameful and unruly fancies, which accompany us even in virtue, outlive our crimes, and frequently become new ones themselves! What happiness to have created innocent and tranquil pleasures for ourselves in these younger years, to have accustomed the heart to be contented with them, not to have contracted the sad necessity of being unable to do without violent and criminal gratifications, and not to have rendered insupportable, by a long habit of warm and tumultuous passions, the gentleness and the tranquillity of virtue and innocence! How these younger years, passed in modesty and in horror at vice, attract blessings on the remainder of life! How attentive to all our ways do they render the Lord! And how much do they render us the well-beloved object of his cares and of his paternal kindness!
But nobody denies, you will say, the happiness of being early devoted to God, and of having been able to resist all the temptations of youth and of pleasure. But that such is not your case; you have followed the common track; the torment of the world and of the passions has swept all before it; you find yourselves, even still, under engagements too intimate and powerful to think of breaking them; you wait a more favourable situation; and you promise yourselves that, when the passion which now enslaves you shall be extinguished, you will never again enter into new bonds, but will heartily range yourselves on the side of duty and of virtue. Second pretext; the passions and the engagements, from which it is impossible as yet to withdraw.
But, in the first place, are you quite certain that this more favourable situation which you await, in order to return to God, shall arrive? Who has revealed to you the course and the duration of the passions which at present retain you? Who has marked limits to them, and said, like the Lord to the troubled waters, " Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther?" When shall they have an end, do you know? Can you take upon you to say that they shall one day be terminated, — that they shall be ended at least before your-
