the decline of age; whether after the errors of youthful manners, or after an entire life of dissipation and licentiousness, thou wouldst, O my God! that their hope in thee be not extinguished; and thou assurest us that the highest point of our crimes is but the lowest degree of thy mercy.
But, likewise, great God! if thou listen to my desires; if, once more, thou restore to me that life and that light which I have lost; if thou break asunder my chains of death which still fetter me; if thou stretch out thine hand to withdraw me from the gulf in which I am plunged, ah I never, O Lord, shall I cease to proclaim thine eternal mercies. I will forget the whole world, that I may be occupied only with the wonders of thy grace toward my soul. I will every moment of my life render glory to the God who shall have delivered me: my mouth, for ever shut against vain things, shall with difficulty be able to express all the transports of my love and of my gratitude; and thy creature, who still groans under the dominion of the world and of sin, then restored to his true Lord, shall, henceforth and for evermore, bless his deliverer.
SERMON XXX.
ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.
"Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory." — Luke xxi. 27.
Such will be that last spectacle which shall terminate the eternal revolutions which the aspect of this world is continually offering to our eyes, and which either amuse us through their novelty, or seduce us by their charms. Such will be the coming of the Son of Man, the day of his revelation, the accomplishment of his kingdom, and the complete redemption of his mystical body. Such the day of the manifestation of consciences, that day of misery and despair to one portion of men, and of peace, consolation, and ineffable delight to the other: the sweet expectation of the just, the dread of the wicked; the day which is to determine the destiny of all men.
It was the image, ever present to their minds, of that terrible day, which rendered the first believers patient under persecution, delighted under sufferance, and illustrious under injury and reproach. It is that which has since supported the faith of martyrs, animated the constancy of virgins, and smoothed to the anchorite all the horrors of a desert: it is that which still, at this day, peoples those religious solitudes erected, by the piety of our ancestors, as asylums against the contagion of the age.
