Him the homage of his obedience, and labor continually to accomplish His adorable will. Surely then, when this great God commands, all things are ready and eager to pay Him homage,—to obey His voice. Yet I am mistaken, it is not so. There is a being who wishes to rise from his state of dependance, a servant who longs to rebel against the authority of his master, a child who no longer acknowledges his father. A voice is heard exclaiming: I will not obey, "I will not serve."* And who is this presumptuous being who dares to rise against a God so great,—to raise the stand ard of revolt against the omnipotent, eternal God? Is it man! Man, a vile compound of slimy clay,-man, a poor, weak, miserable being, whose span of life is but a day, and who is not master of even that! Such is the being who has the effrontery to vie with the Lord behold, says St. Ambrose, nothingness taking up arms against the Supreme Being, to make himself equal to Him! See with what insolent pride he pronounces his blasphemies against the Lord. "Sovereign Master of the universe, thou hast imposed Thy law on all nature, and all nature obeys Thee; but I will not obey. Thou commandest me to honor Thy thrice holy name, to consecrate to Thy service certain days, to love my neighbor, to struggle against my passions; but I will not obey Thee. I will continue to outrage Thy name, I will desecrate the Sundays, I will hate my neighbor, I will detract and calumniate him, I will be the slave of my passions. It is true, Thou hast promised me everlasting felicity if I submit to Thy law; and Thou threatenest me with equal torments if I cast off the yoke of Thy authority; but I disregard Thy commandments, Thy promises and Thy threats. I will think what I wish, love what I wish, do what I wish, and live as I please." The sinner therefore is a rebel against God.

And yet this man who thus offends his God is enriched with the benefits of his divine Master, and all covered with the august blood which has redeemed him. For him God created the world,-for him He sacrificed His own Son. What is still more dreadful, is, that this man makes use of the very benefits of God to insult Him. Mind, heart, imagination, soul, eyes, ears, tongue, feet, hands and body, he has received them all from God, and yet he makes use

* Jeremias, ii: 20.

of them to outrage God. The sinner therefore is an ungrateful

wretch.

Sinner, you forsake the Lord, who is the fountain of living waters, and dig for yourself cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.* You abandon God, who is the principle of all good, to run after creatures, who are but vapors, shadows and empty phantoms. Where then is your faith, your reason and your good sense? You are then foolish as well as wicked.

You sin, that is to say, you sadden the heart of the best of fathers,-you force God to withdraw Himself from you,-you yield up your soul to the devil. Yes, you become the slave of the devil, for St. Peter says that such is the right of war, that he who is vanquished becomes the slave of the conqueror; now, it is the devil who conquers you; you are therefore the slave of the devil.

You sin, that is, you draw upon yoursevles the hatred of God. But, you tell me, this is not so; for God loves all His works, and He hates none of the things which he Has made. But God did not make Sin; Sin is the work of a will contrary to the will of God. God detests Sin; the love which He has for himself is the extent of the hatred which He bears to Sin; He pursues it therefore with an infinite, eternal hatred. Now, if God detests Sin with an eternal, necessary and infinite hatred, He detests the sinner in the same manner; that is to say, He can not avoid hating him as a sinner. In reality, the Holy Ghost informs us that "to God the wicked and his wickedness are hateful alike." What a misfortune to be hated by God! Can there be any lot more sad, more miserable?

To be hated by God, while every day we stand in need of His graces and blessings! To be hated by God, while His love alone can open for us the gates of heaven! To be hated by God, our sovereign Judge, who can destroy our soul and body for all eternity, and bury us forever in the abyss of everlasting woes! Oh! no doubt, you hate and detest Sin,-you will fly from it, never permit it to dwell in your hearts. "I have chosen the way of truth; we shall be wise, because the Lord shall always be before my eyes. to my feet, and a light to my paths.

you will

precepts of the law of the Thy word, O Lord, is a lamp Give me understanding, and

Jeremias, ii: 13. + Wisdom, xi: 25

Wisdom, xiv: 9.

I shall keep Thy law. Uphold me according to thy word, and I shall live. Help me, and I shall be saved."*

I have said that Sin is a violation of the law of God, but a willful violation. A person is not guilty of Sin when he is ignorant of the law and has no will to violate it, when there is neither advertence nor consent. For example, he is not guilty of Sin, who without malice, without advertence and without will, has had the misfortune to kill his neighbor. He is not guilty of Sin, who through involuntary forgetfulness or through ignorance, violates the law of the Church, by eating flesh meat on a day of abstinence, for there is in the heart of this man neither the will to offend God, nor the intention to violate His law, nor contempt of the commandments. Thus sick people and prisoners do not Sin when they fail to hear mass on Sundays and holidays of obligation; for they are lawfully prevented from complying with this duty. You suffer violent temptations in your mind, in your imagination or in your flesh; you are a prey to bad thoughts and evil desires; are you guilty of Sin? No, if they come in spite of yourselves, against your will, without any fault on your part. But you are guilty in your temptations, if you voluntarily and presumptuously expose yourselves to the occasions of Sin; as for example, if you were to visit a person with whom you would be tempted to commit Sin, or to keep bad company, if you were to read bad books or to live in idleness. When you thus expose yourselves to the danger, it is useless for you to say, I was unable to resist,-I was not free. You should not have exposed yourselves, or placed yourselves in a position wherein you could no longer be masters of yourselves. Thus, my Brethren, a man becomes guilty before God when he does things contrary to His law, and gives his consent directly or indirectly in the cause; that is to say, when he exposes himself to an occasion bad in itself, and when he perceives, at least in a confused way, the evils that may proximately result from such exposure. A man gets drunk; knowing by sad experience that he will commit in his drunkenness great crimes, he is responsible before God for all the Sins that he shall commit in that state, although at the time when he commits them he may be deprived of his reason; he is guilty

* Psalms, cxviii.

of the immodest words which he utters, of the oaths and blasphemies which he pronounces, of the insults and outrages which he perpetrates against his neighbor, of the injuries which he inflicts, and the scandal that he gives: all these things are voluntary in their cause, and are therefore sinful in the sight of the Lord.

Sin is a transgression of the law of God;-why do we not speak of human laws? Because every time that a man violates a just law, whether it be divine or human, he violates the law of God. The Apostle tells us "that all power comes from God;" and the Lord himself says, "it is by me that kings reign and establish just laws." Whoever resists lawful authority, resists God himself,resists the order which He has established. God has given to certain men the right to govern us; and to violate their laws, is to violate the law of God, and therefore, he who does so commits Sin.

The Empress Eudoxia, wishing to get rid of St. John Chrysostom, whose zeal and reproaches she dreaded, sent messengers from her court to sound him, and ascertain what he most feared. At first they threatened to deprive him of his temporal goods. You could not confer a greater favor on me, replied the holy bishop, than to relieve me of so heavy a burden.-You will be sent into exile. Then it will be necessary for you to send me into some place where God is not; was the reply.-You will be condemned to prison and to death.-Very well! I am ready to suffer all these things. Tell the Empress that of all the things on earth I fear nothing but Sin. May heaven grant, my Brethren, that it may be so with you! However disagreeable the troubles of earth may be, fear them not; they are as nothing when compared to Sin. Fathers and mothers, teach this great truth to your children; tell them frequently how much God hates Sin, and how displeasing sinners are in His holy sight. As for ourselves, my Brethren, let us fly from Sin as from a most dangerous serpent. We have but too often, alas! provoked the wrath of God by our transgressions, let us endeavor, while we have time, to appease His anger by our repentance, that we may become children of mercy, and experience its salutary effects throughout a happy eternity.-AMEN.

SERMON XC.

ON SIN (CONTINUED.)

"My son, take heed thou never consent to sin, nor transgress the commandments of the Lord our God."-TOBIAS, iv: 6.

In our last instruction, my Brethren, I endeavored to make you understand what Sin is in general. I told you that Sin is a thought, word, or action contrary to the law of God; and, I trust, convinced you that it is an odious rebellion against the Lord, a-black ingratitude, and a great folly. Very wise then was the advice which the holy man, Tobias, gave to his son, when he said to him: "My son, take heed thou never consent to sin, nor transgress the commandments of the Lord our God." To-day, I mean to speak to you of the different kinds of Sin.

How many kinds of Sin are there? There are two, original and actual. This word original implies that it comes from our origin. Original Sin is that which our first father, Adam, our origin, committed in the earthly paradise, and in which all of us have participated, because our wills were included, as it were, in that of Adam. If Adam had continued faithful to the commandment which God had imposed upon him, if he had not sinned, like him, all of us would have had the happiness of being born in sanctity and justice, and we would have partaken of all the advantages and privileges which the Lord had gratuitously and so generously granted to him. The King of kings said to him: "you shall be happy and immortal, you and your posterity, but on condition that you prove your submission by remaining faithful to the easy commandment which I impose upon you." But Adam fulfilled not the condition, he disobeyed God, he fell away from grace, he lost it, and we shared in his misfortune. We were conceived in iniquity,—our mothers brought us forth in Sin, and, had not the holy waters of Baptism