gree to our future eternal reward. O priceless time of grace! that we blind mortals so often misspend in idleness, and sleep, and frivolity, although we might gain endless treasures by it! O deplorable state of sin! in which most men are for weeks, months, and years without doing penance, and meanwhile, since they have not sanctifying grace, they are not able, even by works that are in themselves most holy, to add the least iota to the goods of heaven! How careful, diligent, and thrifty we are when there is question of making a few shillings and increasing our temporal wealth! Should we not employ at least the same amount of energy in adding to our eternal glory in heaven? But in what does this increase of glory properly consist which distinguishes one saint from another? The answer to this we shall see briefly in the
Second Part.
A higher degree of glory in heaven consists in a clearer vision of God. For one to be truly happy in the possession of a great good he must have a true knowledge and appreciation of the good he owns, otherwise he will find as little pleasure in it as a child would in a costly diamond, with whose value it is utterly unacquainted. And the clearer that knowledge is, the greater is the joy, the happiness that comes from the good possessed. Herein consists chiefly and solely the difference of glory among the elect in heaven, namely, in the clearer vision and knowledge of God. Each and every one of the blessed, as we have said before, beholds the uncovered face of God and the full plenitude of the divine essence; they all see His omnipotence, wisdom, holiness, goodness, justice, beauty, eternity, as well as all His other infinite perfections; yet one sees this far more clearly and perfectly than another, according as the greater or less degree of his merits affords him a greater or less light. Just as on earth any eye, even that of an ignorant peasant, can see the firmament and remark its size and roundness, its stars and clouds; but the astronomer with his glass can have a far clearer and more extended view of it. Any mind can grasp a truth along with its fundamental reason, but a cultivated mind will see it far clearer than an ignorant and unlearned one. Thus, speaking with due proportion of the blessed in heaven, it is also with the beatific vision, according to the greater or less amount of light that accompanies it.
In a greater From this clearer vision and knowledge of God comes an-
