The air. In the same manner the four elements shall take the field against sinners. The air that gave them breath and voice, so that they could breathe and speak; from which they received the fruitful rain; in which the birds dwelt to their delight and nourishment—the air will attack them on all sides; it will throw down buildings by the violence of opposing winds; it will tear up trees by the roots; send down hail-storms to strike the beasts of the field dead, and with thunder and fierce lightnings and terrible apparitions that shall be seen in the air (such as were not beheld even in Egypt in the time of the hardened Pharao, nor in Jerusalem when that city was destroyed), it will fill every one with dismay, as if to complain of the sinner and say: “He hath stretched out his hand against God, and hath strengthened him self against the Almighty.”[1]
The water. The water that supplied sinners with drink and with fish for their food, and with salt, and that carried them from one country to another in the pursuit of their business, will then overstep its boundaries and inundate the adjoining land far and wide; it will rage and foam against the godless, ready to swallow them up as it did Jonas: “Be thou ashamed, O Sidon! for the sea speaketh.”[2] Be ashamed, O Christian! the sea shall cry out with its rushing waves; be ashamed that I, who have no understand ing like you, for whom God has not died as He has for you, who have neither eternal punishment to fear nor eternal rewards to hope for as you have—be ashamed that I have been for six thousand years obedient to my Creator, and have not gone as much as the breadth of a grain of sand beyond the limits He marked out for me, but have always kept within bounds; while you, on the contrary, endowed with reason and countless benefits, allured by the hope of heaven, terrified by the fear of hell, have yet often and deliberately transgressed the commands of God, and wallowed in a very sea of vice! Be ashamed at being overcome by a senseless thing such as I am, in obedience to God! O Almighty God, the waves will cry out as they rise towards heaven, show forth Thy justice against sinners, and since they have not wished to live in the ocean of Thy mercy and find their salvation, let them now sink into the deep abyss of Thy justice, and feel the weight of Thy avenging arm!
