simply for His own sake, and desire nothing more than that His holy will should be perfectly accomplished in von, and that you could thereby give Him some pleasure—holy souls, I say, how few you are compared to the vast multitude of men! And indeed at first even you were not so perfect, but had to begin by the fear of hell before ascending to such a high degree of charity. Ah, if we were all like yon in this particular, the fire of hell might well be extinguished! I acknowledge that we have all reason enough to have the same sentiments as you; for the great, good, and infinitely amiable God deserves that we should all serve Him in the most perfect manner, and gratuitously, and the heaven of joys merits well that we should spend a thousand million years and a million of lives, if we had them, in all sorts of penitential works to gain it; but, alas!—ah, how blind we are!—although faith assures us that besides heaven there is the everlasting fire of hell, that every mortal sin deserves hell, that he who dies in mortal sin shall lose heaven and be condemned to that fire, how recklessly and carelessly we live on in sin! Purgatory? But what is it after all? Why should we be afraid of it, so to speak? It lasts only for a time. And what sort of a life would there be in the world if there were nothing of the kind to fear? Oh, I repeat, if God were to extinguish the fire of hell the world would be a thousand times worse than it is; if God were to extinguish the fire of hell there would be no human souls in heaven.
Hence we should thank Him for having appointed hell as a punishment for sin. Therefore, since God earnestly desires to make all men happy, He is compelled to threaten us with that grievous penalty; so that they who refuse to be led gently by love and the desire of a reward may at least be driven into heaven by violence through the fear of eternal punishment. And hence in this respect we owe the Almighty our sincerest thanks for His great goodness and mercy in thus menacing us with hell-fire, and compelling us to work out our salvation, to avoid evil, to strive after virtue, in order to be happy with Him forever in heaven.
Folly of most men in wilfully hurling themselves into hell.
But what should be my thoughts now? What should first and most excite my astonishment? Thy eager desire, O God of goodness! to make us happy? for in order to drive men into heaven Thou hast been compelled to make hell; or rather the stupidity of most men, which is enough to make heaven and earth wonder? for even the threat of hell is not powerful enough to curb their madness and folly; in spite of it they refuse to serve such a well-meaning God; they will not allow Him to drag them to
