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The wicked man is in truth never happy, “but he is thought so, because we do not know what happiness is.”^[1] But we will not dispute this point with him to-day. If the sinner prospers while the just man suffers, do not be uneasy on that account; for, I ask again, how long will it last? A very short while. “For yet a little while,” says David, “and the wicked shall not be, and thou shalt seek his place, and shalt not find it.”^[2] You will look around for some traces of his former prosperity, but you shall not find any. This very day, if I wish, I can put an end to it; all I need do is to visit him with some unforeseen calamity; then there will be an end to his riches; he will lose the favor of the great; his authority in the world will be at an end; a fever, a toothache, a pain in the head will suffice to rob life of all its joys for him. “See how fleeting that happiness is,” says St. Augustine.^[3] Does that deserve to be envied by a reasoning man whose end is to possess an infinite Good in the kingdom of heaven? Let the supposed happiness of the wicked last as long as it may; the end must come; at the approach of death, and it is following our every footstep, there will be an end of all pleasure, and nothing of the things that made up their happiness here shall go with them into the next life. When a great lord visits a town in state he has in his train a number of led-horses gorgeously caparisoned with gold and silver trappings, while the horse of the poor peasant groans under the weight of the heavy wooden wagon. Truly there is a great difference between the two animals. But wait a little, till evening comes; then the grandly-equipped horses will be stripped of their trappings, and will appear just as bare as the peasant’s poor animal; nay, the former, since they are better fed, lose their value sooner, and are sent sooner to the knacker. So will it be with the wicked, whom David compares to horses and mules: “Do not become like the horse and the mule, that have no understanding.”^[4] Many of them now abound in splendor and magnificence, in honor and authority, in joys and pleasures, in riches and wealth; they are heavily laden with those things, and strut about with them for a short time; their mangers are always ready for them, and are well filled: “They take the timbrel, and the harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. They

1. Ideo magis felix putatur, quia quid sit felicitas ignoratur.
2. Adhuc pusillum et non erit peccator, et quæres locum ejus, et non invenies.—Ps. xxxvi. 10.
3. Ecce volaticam felicitatem.
4. Nolite fieri sicut equus et mulus, quibus non est intellectus.—Ps. xxxi. 9.