hear you say, "if the horse refuses to eat meat, and cares only for oats and hay, since it is its nature to do this." You are perfectly right, but mark this: there are human beings, and unfortunately they are very numerous, who, like this horse and other animals, maintain their position at the manger, and eat their hay and their oats, instead of cultivating an appetite for better food.
2. You will understand what I am driving at. There are people both young and old, who have no appetite for anything better than the miserable hay and oats of earthly delights; people to whom pleasure and gold seem to constitute a heaven upon earth. They long for animal enjoyments, not for celestial joys. Such persons would willingly learn how to pray, indeed they would go on praying until their voice failed, if only God would grant them just one request. And what, think you, would be this request? Do you imagine that these votaries of pleasure would pray for spiritual and eternal gifts? They can not bear the thought of death and eternity. I have already told you that their heaven is on earth. Their sole wish is that the Almighty would make a bargain with them, and promise that they should never grow old, and never die. You do not hear them say with St. Paul: "I desire to be dissolved." Oh, no! but "I desire to remain here, to live forever on earth."
3. And what would they promise if God
