the principal injury which sinners do to God by mortal sin, consists in turning their back upon their Creator and their sovereign good. St. Thomas defines mortal sin to be ” a turning away from the immutable good" (p. 1, qu. 24, art. 4). Of this injury the Lord complains in the following words: ” Thou hast forsaken me, saith the Lord; thou hast gone backward. ” (Jer. xv. 6.) Since, then, the greatest guilt of the sinner consists in deliberately consenting to lose God, the loss of God shall constitute his greatest punishment in hell. ” There shall be weeping." In hell there is continual weeping; but what is the object of the bitterest tears of the unhappy damned? It is the thought of having lost God through their own fault. This shall be the subject of the present discourse. Be attentive, brethren.
1. No! dearly beloved Christians! the goods of the earth are not the end for which God has placed you in the world; the end for which he has created you is the attainment of eternal life. ” And the end life eternal." (Rom. vi. 22.) Eternal life consists in loving God, and possessing him for eternity. Whosoever attains this end shall be for ever happy; but he who, through his own fault, does not attain it, loses God; he shall be miserable for eternity, and shall weep for ever, saying: ” My end is perished." (Lamen. iii. 18.)
2. The pain produced by loss is proportioned to the value of what has been lost. If a person lose a jewel a diamond worth a hundred crowns, he feels great pain; if the diamond were worth two hundred crowns, the pain is double; if worth four hundred, the pain is still greater. Now, I ask, what is the good which a damned soul has lost? She has lost God; she has lost an infinite good. The pain, then, arising from the loss of God is an infinite pain. ” The pain of the damned," says St. Thomas, ” is infinite, because it is the loss of an infinite good." (1. 2, qu. 87, a. 4.) Such, too, is the doctrine of St. Bernard, who says, that the value of the loss of the damned is measured from the infinitude of God the supreme good. Hence, hell does not consist in its devouring fire, nor in its intolerable stench, nor in the unceasing shrieks and howlings of the
