session of my heart! I found myself by a just desertion of thy grace reduced to a mere nothing, and I did not know it. Hence St. Paul, 1 Cor. iii. could not find a more energetic expression to represent the nature of sin, than by calling it nothing. If I have not charity, says he, if I am not in the grace of God, I am nothing; though by the force of my faith I should transport mountains, and suffer the most racking tortures, it avails me nothing, if I am void of charity and stripped of the grace of God.

Whilst we are united to God by sanctifying grace, and ingrafted on Jesus Christ like the branches of the vine that are joined to the trunk, all the good actions that we deliberately perform are acceptable to God, and meritorious of life everlasting. Every act of virtue that we do in the interim acquires for us a new degree of grace, and entitles us to a new degree of happiness; and, consequently, as many virtuous actions as we perform in the state of grace, so many Crowns of Glory are reserved for us in the kingdom of Heaven. This is a consoling truth, that should engage us to live always in a state of grace, since we thereby have it in our power to amass for ourselves immense treasures of merit in Heaven, and thus render ourselves eternally great, eternally glorious, eternally happy.

But alas! it is equally true, that if we have the misfortune to incur the displeasure of God, and forfeit his sanctifying grace by mortal sin, we not only lose the merit of all our past good works as long as we continue in that unhappy state, but Also we become like unto withered and lopped off vine branches, which draw no juice from the root, and are therefore incapable of bearing fruit; for as in a state of natural death, it is impossible to perform any vital function or action of life; so in the state of spiritual death or mortal sin, we cannot perform any action of spiritual life, or meritorious of life everlasting. Hence the prophet Ezechiel says, c. xxviii. If the just man withdraws himself from his justice, the virtues he has practised shall be no more remembered: The Lord will make no account of them, nor recompence them in the order of glory, unless they revive and recover the life of grace by a true repentance. As for the good works that are performed in the state and affection of mortal sin, they never revive or recover the life of grace, as they were never animated by it; they are dead in the sight of God, void of condign merit, and unworthy to be entered in the book of eternal life, or ranked in the number of those virtuous actions to which the Upright Judge has promised a Crown of Justice, as the Apostle speaks. However, a sinner is not for this reason to omit the practice of good works, or to neglect the duties of religion, because he has unhappily fallen; for, though the works that are done in the state of mortal sin are not worthy of God's complacency, nor meritorious of life everlasting, yet they are not altogether unprofitable, but rather of great advantage, because they may contribute to withdraw the

sinner from the dismal gulph of mortal sin, and dispose him for the sacraments of reconciliation; they are the only resource he has then left, and therefore, far from neglecting the practice of such works, or transgressing the general obligations of Christianity, because he is in mortal sin, he should for this the very reason redouble his diligence; he should fast and pray more, he should give more abundant alms to the poor, and apply himself with greater ardour to the practice of good works, in order to avert the wrath of God and soften his justice. Who knows, says the Prophet Jonas, if the God of mercy will not be thereby touched and engaged to look down with pity on the sinner, and grant him the grace of a true repentance. It was by such dispositions that the Ninivites averted the indignation of Heaven, and the humble publican obtained mercy and pardon; and it is also by similar means that sinner every ought to labour to rise out of the abyss of mortal sin, and reinstate himself in the grace and friendship of God, as I will shew you in the sequel.

you

What you are to resolve upon, my brethren, when have unhappily lost God's grace, and fallen into mortal sin, is, to hasten without delay to repair your loss, and to rise from the dismal death of sin by a speedy and sincere repentance; for to defer applying this healing balsam will only serve to add to your misfortune, to widen the dreadful wounds made by sin, and to render your cure the more difficult; it will serve only to strengthen your fetters and to remove you farther from God, farther from the way of salvation. If by imprudence or mistake you had lost the good graces of an earthly monarch, or incurred the anger of some powerful friend to whom you are indebted for many signal favours, and who could easily oppress you with the weight of his power, would it be necessary to exhort you to have recourse to every means in your power in order to appease him, and re-establish yourselves in his favour? Your own interest, and the apprehension of feeling the effects of his anger, or of losing the advantages that might be expected from his benevolence, would sufficiently press you to recover his friendship without loss of time. If robbers had entered into your house at night, says the Prophet Abdias, c. v. and had carried off all that was precious and valuable therein, how great would your trouble and concern be? With what speed and diligence would you not pursue them, in order to recover what they had carried off? When you are attacked by a dangerous fit of sickness, do you not endeavour to remove the cause of your complaint, and to re-establish your health with speed, with care and solicitude? You do not wait for the last extremity to call in a physician and apply for a remedy. You submit to the most painful cures; you swallow the bitterest pills; you suffer the sharpest operations of physic and surgery. Should you not be more diligent, more impatient, more solicitous to recover the grace of God, and the spiritual life and health of

your soul? Should you not be more grieved and concerned for the loss of it than for any other loss whatever? Is it not the greatest of all losses? Is there any thing so rigorous or so painful in the salutary remedies of penance and mortification that you should not willingly undergo, in order to heal your spiritual maladies, and re establish yourselves in that happy state of grace from which you fell? As soon as you are sensible of your fall, you should rise, with the prodigal child, and return to your God and your heavenly Father without delay, at the first call of grace which invites you to return to him. If you seek him immediately, whilst he is not far distant, you may find and regain him without any great difficulty; but if you wait until he retires far from you, it is only by extraordinary efforts that you will be able to recover his favour and friendship. Hence the Prophet Isaias says, seek the Lord whilst he can be found; call on him whilst he is nigh, c. lv. v. 7. Do not delay to answer him as soon as he calls on you; never defer until another time to follow his inspirations. If he stretches out his hand this day to assist you, embrace the offer readily; if he strikes at the door of your heart, let him have admittance immediately; if he casts on you a glance of his merciful eyes, make use of it, as Peter the Apostle did, to weep bitterly for your crimes, and to wash them off by tears of a sincere repentance; for if you hesitate and let slip the precious and decisive moment of grace, you will run the risk of never meeting the same favourable opportunity again. The day, perhaps, will come, when you may in vain cry out for mercy; for mercy abused is often changed into inflexible justice. Thousands of sinners have been convinced of this terrifying truth by woful experience; relying on the deceitful hope of the time to come, and referring their conversion to a future day, as if they were masters of futurity, or could command the grace of God whenever they were willing to demand it, they have been justly disappointed; their projects have been baffled and their vain expectations blasted; their days have been cut short, and they have been hurried out of the world by a sudden and unprovided death, at a time when they least expected it. This was the case of the five foolish virgins mentioned in the Gospel: they dallied and neglected to trim and furnish their lamps when the bridegroom called upon them, and therefore they found the gate of mercy afterwards shut in their face; all their tears and entreaties were not sufficient to procure them admittance; they were justly excluded from the nuptial banquet; the bridegroom became inflexible, and condemned them to be banished out of his sight for ever.

This plainly shews how dangerous it is for a sinner to procrastinate the great work of his reconciliation with God, and reject the heavenly calls and graces, by which the Father of Mercies invites him to return speedily to a proper sense of his duty. Your God at present says to you, my brethren, by the

preachers of his Gospel, what the Angel formerly said to St. Peter in the prison, Surge velociter, Arise with speed. Throw off the shackles and fetters with which you are bound; disengage yourselves from the galling yoke of sin under which you miserably groan. Renounce those detestable habits of drunkenness, impurity, detraction, injustice, cursing, swearing and blaspheming, by which you are enslaved; sleep no longer in the arms of perdition, but rise without further delay out of the lethargy of sin, and Jesus Christ will enlighten you; he calls on you by those pious emotions which he at present excites in the bottom of your hearts; he calls on you by those celestial rays of light which he darts on your understanding; he calls upon you by the good thoughts and secret inspirations which you inwardly feel; he calls on you by the many edifying examples you behold, and by the salutary instructions and exhortations which are delivered to you from the chair of truth. If you reject all these graces and prove deaf to all these calls, your neglect and contempt of them may, perhaps, fill up the measure of your iniquities, and put the last seal to your eternal reprobation. The Lord, provoked by your obstinacy and resist. ance to his gracious calls, will, perhaps, in his turn, shut his ears to your entreaties, and be deaf to your petitions, when you will wish to return to him and to implore his mercy; he will, perhaps refuse you his powerful assistance in the hour of your greatest distress, and let you die in your sins, according to these words of the Scripture, Prov. c. i. v. 24. I have called upon you, and you have refused to hear me, you have despised my counsel, and neglected my reprehensions; I will also, in my turn, laugh at your destruction, and not hear your cries in the hour of your tribulation, and again, Jo. c. vii. v. 34. You shall seek me and you shall not find me, and you shall die in your sins, c. viii. v. 24.

If, therefore, any in this congregation should happen to be so unhappy as to be involved in the guilt and affection of mortal sin, let me conjure them to hasten to the throne of grace with confidence that they may obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid, Heb. c. iv. v. 16. Let me entreat them to open their eyes before they are opened by the scorching flames of hell, and to repent in time, lest they may have reason hereafter to repent in vain for a never-ending eternity. The precious blood of Jesus will cry out to Heaven for mercy, and will plead their pardon and wash away their sins, provided they sincerely unite their. voice, their hearts and penitential tears with it. O Blessed Redeemer, do not suffer us to be so ungrateful to thee or so cruel to ourselves, as to frustrate the designs of thy mercy through our own obstinacy. Grant, we beseech thee, the gift of perseverance to those happy souls which are already in the state of grace, and the gift of a true contrition to those who are labouring under the galling yoke and miserable bondage of sin, that being restored to the sweet liberty of thy children, and being

united to thee here by grace, they may be united to thee hereafter in the kingdom of thy glory, for ever and ever. This is the blessing that I wish you, my brethren, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

TWNTY-EIGHTH DAY OF AUGUST.

On the Festival of St. Augustine.

Sapientiam ejus enarrabunt gentes, et tandem ejus enuntiabit Ecclesia.

Ecclesiastic, c. xxxix. v. 14.

Nations shall declare his wisdom, and the Church shall proclaim his praise. Eccl. c. xxxix. v. 14.

On this day we solemnize the glorious memory of one of the most illustrious doctors and most eminent saints that ever adorned the Church of Jesus Christ, I mean the great Augustine, who was great indeed by the many excellent qualities which he received from nature, but greater by those that divine grace favoured him with; great by his prodigious talents, greater by the good use he made of them; great by his learning, greater by his humility; great in the esteem of all nations, greater, by many degrees, in the sight of the Lord. In him we plainly see that man, though weak and insufficient of himself, is capable of the greatest exploits with the assitance of God's grace. Whoever considers the wonderful change the grace of God wrought in him, the boundless liberality with which it was bestowed on him, the exact fidelity with which he corresponded with it, and the unparalleled zeal with which he defended it, must acknowledge that he was a prodigy of divine grace in every shape, and that there is no saint after the great St. Paul, to whom those words of the Apostle are more applicable: By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace has not been in vain in me. Not unlike the supreme planet of nature, this bright and transcendent genius was eclipsed for a time, and involved, in his early days in the dark errors of infidelity, until, as the Scripture phrase expresses it, God commanded light to shine forth from the darkness, and dispersed the thick clouds wherein he was enveloped. Yes, my brethern, it was the all-powerful hand of God, that wrought this wonderful change in Augustine, and opened his eyes by the luminous rays of his grace, which, when it pleases, is able to triumph over the proud spirit of man, and purify the most corrupt heart in an instant. It can form sons for Abraham out of the hardest