money, a task that would require many months, then perhaps I might be able to say in a general way whether I am richer or poorer; but it is utterly impossible to enter minutely into such matters.
In the judgment we shall be questioned about all we have thought during our lives. My dear brethren, in what shall the question consist that we shall each have to answer when we appear before the tribunal of divine justice? Will it merely regard what has been done for the space of a year in our households? No, indeed! To put the matter in a few words, we shall be asked about everything that we have done, said, thought, arid omitted during our whole lives, in all places and circumstances, counting from the first dawn of reason to the last moment in which the soul left the body. “The books were opened,” says the Apocalypse, “and the dead were judged by those things which were written in the books, according to their works;”[1] all the secrets of men’s hearts and consciences shall then be displayed in a most vivid light. “Give an account of thy stewardship,”[2] shall be said to each one, as was said to the steward in the Gospel. Come here, O mortal! give an account of all that has occurred in thy household during the time of thy life. Account for the thoughts that were in thy mind! Thought is free, we generally say; no worldly jurisdiction has any control over it, not even the Church herself, unless one reveals his thoughts to her. Thou alone, O Judge of the living and the dead, hast reserved this right to Thyself! “The Lord is the weigher of spirits.”[3] In Thy scales are weighed not only the works but the most secret, hidden, and unknown spirits, the thoughts I had from my early childhood until the present moment, and which I cannot remember myself because their number is almost infinite. All are written down most exactly in Thy great account-book, and one day Thou wilt read them out for me, and call upon me to answer for them. “Inquisition shall be made into the thoughts of the ungodly.”[4] O my God! what filth shall then come forth from the hearts of many who now show no mark of it on their foreheads! All the envious, hateful, angry, vindictive, suspicious, rash-judging thoughts you entertained against your neighbor; all the vain, self-conceited, ambitious thoughts with which you flattered yourself: your beauty,
