join its foul can-ion and drag it down to eternal flames! Accursed body! the soul shall say; how can I remain united tothis putrid mass for all eternity? Art thou that sink of corruption that I have so much loved and petted? for whose pleasure I have lost the glory of heaven that I was created for? For thy sake, that thou mightest enjoy thyself and live in luxury, I am lost forever! Accursed soul! the body shall exclaim; thou shouldst with reason have held me better in check, and refused me what was bad and injurious for me! Oh, rather let me lie in the grave consumed with worms than accompany thee to hell!
From this both may learn a salutary lesson. Pious Christians! to console yourselves in your daily trials and crosses and to encourage you to lead mortified lives, think often of this: the less comfort your body now has in the shape of sensual, earthly, and transitory pleasures; the more it is plagued with labor, hunger, thirst, sickness, and pain; the more it is chastised by voluntary mortifications, the more glorious and beautiful will it be at the last day, when it shall be again united to your soul. Vain worldlings! do you also frequently think of this to inspire yourselves with a salutary fear; no one can go to heaven by leading a luxurious, idle, sensual, comfortable life; the way on which Jesus Christ has walked is a narrow, rude way, beset with thorns and crosses, and it must be travelled by all who wish to follow Him to life; no one shall be reckoned in the number of the elect, no one shall be acknowledged as His child by the eternal Father, who is not like to the image of His crucified Son. What will then become of you, to whom the very name of the cross is a hideous goblin? you who never deny your mouth, eyes, ears, and other senses any pleasure they ask for? you who always pet yourselves and treat yourselves so tenderly? you who adorn your bodies contrary to the law of God, the teaching of the Gospel, and the rules of Christian humility, as the vain usages of the world demand, and to the scandal of others? You will receive those bodies again, but in what condition? How monstrous, deformed, and horrible they shall be? To dwell in them in that state, even if you had nothing else to suffer, would be a hell in itself.
Then the great ones of earth shall be humbled and put to shame.
Thirdly, what a change there will be in the minds of many when all mankind shall behold themselves huddled together without any respect for persons: kings and princes with lowly peasants, high-born ladies with vulgar kitchen-maids—all assembled before the judgment-seat of God, as St. John says in the Apoca-