mystic death. Delay not then, O loving Father, to come and meet thy repentant child, that thou mayst put an end to my misery, reform me to thy image, and keep me for ever united to thee.
PRAYER.
I POSSESS thee, O most amiable Father ! in my heart: what a prodigy of love and forbearance ! But what dost thou demand in return? "My child, give me thy heart! ” (Prow, xxiii. 26.) To this tender invitation, my God, what shall I answer? Can it be possible that thou, beholding its misery, should see anything in it worthy of thy acceptance; rather are there not many things in it which should cause thee to reject it? But thou demandest it even with a degree of jealousy, and threatenest me with thy heaviest judgments if I refuse to give it to thee. Receive it, then, my God; I can no longer refuse it; to whom else can I give it? What has it ever found or what can it ever look for out of thee, but emptiness, agitation and bitterness! I recall with grief those days of darkness, when this miserable heart was far removed from thee, straying from the path of rectitude. To what a deplorable state, was it reduced, when, drawn away by the seductions of the world, it yielded to its false joys, and was inebriated with its fatal pleasures: when, criminally attached to the earth, it thought only of accumulating its perishable goods, and seemed to lose sight of those which were eternal: when domineered over by its criminal passions, it yielded to their guilty suggestions, erecting an idol within itself, to which it sacrificed its repose, its liberty, its conscience, its religion, and its God. But as a criminal state can be no other than
