think of this. What folly! If we go to the country for a few days to enjoy ourselves we send out provisions beforehand; we roast and boil and make every preparation, although we could find food enough in the place itself if we wish to pay for it. And now we are already half way on our journey to a vast desert, to the house of our eternity, where we can buy nothing, find nothing, expect nothing, except what we bring with us; where neither money, nor treasures, nor learning, nor knowledge, nor art, nor dignities, nor honors can help us in the least. Yet we make such little preparation, we think so little of this journey, that hardly once in a year do we ask ourselves: where go thou? Truly we are travelling as blind people! And if we occasionally make some provision for the road, that is, if we have performed some good works, gained some merits, we often act like the traveller of whom I have told you, who sold his jar of water; we sell our provisions, not for ten thousand crowns, but often for a wretched shilling of unjust profit, for a point of honor, for a moment of brutal pleasure, for the respect or love of some mortal creature! Thus we have lost all!
For which repentance will come too late hereafter. And how vain the repentance this folly of ours will entail, when we shall have come to the end of our journey and shall find nothing but our sins! When people enter on the married state without thought or reflection or seeking counsel from God, how bitterly they repent afterwards of their folly! Oh, would that I knew you before as I know you now, they say to each other; I would never have married you! Would that I had never laid eyes on that man! But all your wailings are of no avail; you should have thought of that before; it is too late to repent now; you must live with that man whether you like it or not. Yet be contented and have patience; you can still hope that death will put an end to your troubles. But if you have once entered into the house of your eternity, and you find things wrong with you there, there is no help for you, no hope; what you have neglected here is lost forever and can never be re placed. “We fools,” you will cry out, and with you all care less Christians for all eternity, “therefore we have erred from the way of truth, and the light of justice has not shined to us;”[1] all is lost and gone from us forever!
When they “Man shall go into the house of his eternity.” Mark those
- ↑ Nos insensati…ergo erravimus a via veritatis, et justitiæ lumen non luxit nobis.—Wis. v. 4, 6.
