takes all the strength of two, three, or four horses to move it. So shall we find it, too, with our sins. During life we are, as it were, floating in the water; we think so little that sins appear but a light matter to us; we drag them along one after the other without feeling their wickedness, without being aware of any weight on our conscience. But "when he shall sleep," when a man comes to the point of death and has to drag his sins out of the water to the haven of eternity; then he opens his eyes and sees what an intolerable burden he has been bearing about with him. Then will appear as great balks of timber the revengeful feelings he so long entertained against his enemy, the scandal he gave by his loose conduct, vanity in dress, and dissolute behavior, the freedom with which he allowed his eyes to wander on dangerous objects, the impure thoughts and desires that he so often amused his imagination with, not believing or wishing to believe that they were vicious or dangerous, the pleasures that he looked on as innocent, the confessions that he made insincerely, not disclosing his secret sins, the confessions he made through hypocrisy, mere custom, human respect, without true sorrow and repentance, without a firm resolution of amendment, without avoiding the proximate occasion of sin, without restoring ill-gotten goods—things of which he thought little and made no scruple of; those uncharitable conversations about the faults of others that tend to injure their good name; those superstitious practices contrary to the teaching of the Church that were indulged in with even a show of piety; those injustices so frequently committed in business and so easily excused as trifling; that carelessness on the part of parents and superiors with regard to their children and subjects; all these things, of which so little is made now, "when he shall sleep," when he shall come to the haven of eternity, will appear in their full gravity. Then will he say as the wicked king Antiochus said on his death-bed: "Into what tribulation am I come, and into what floods of sorrow, wherein now I am: I that was pleasant and beloved in my power. But now I remember the evils that I did in Jerusalem."[1] Now I remember, will many a one cry out, now I remember the sins I committed at home, in the garden, in company, alone, which my sloth, my wilful blindness concealed from me. Alas! what anguish and fear have come upon me now about things that I
- ↑ In quantam tribulationem deveni, et in quos fluctus tristitia in qua nunc sum, qui jucundus eram, et dilectus in potestate mea! Nunc vero reminiscor malorum quae feci in Jerusalem.—I. Mach. vi. 11, 12.
