who even think of them. When a hundred years have passed the stone pillars fall down; time eats away the names and escutcheons, and even if these remain uninjured there is no one living who pays any attention to them. It is as if one wrote his name in the dust to have it blown away by the first puff of wind. So speaks the Prophet: “Like the dust, which the wind driveth from the face of the earth;”[1] or like a mighty tree, which with its wide-spreading branches occupies a great space of ground; when it is cut down it makes a great crash; but if you go a few days afterwards to the place where it stood, you will hardly know it had ever been there. The workmen have cut it into pieces, and brought it to their master to be burnt to ashes; and here again the Prophet supplies us with a simile: “I have seen the wicked highly exalted, and lifted up like the cedars of Libanus. And I passed by, and lo he was not: and I sought him, and his place was not found.”[2] So that everything in this world is transitory. “Vanity of vanities, and all things are vanity;”[3] words wrung out of Solomon, who as it were swam in a sea of all imaginable worldly goods and pleasures, and wrung out of him by experience. Therefore there is nothing on earth that can satisfy and fully content the immortal soul.
The joys of heaven shall be everlasting. The dwelling of the elect in heaven alone is that most happy place of perfect joys, of which the angel Gabriel said to the Blessed Virgin, when announcing to her that she was to be the Mother of God: “Of His kingdom there shall be no end.”[4] And as it is said of the wicked on the last day: “These shall go into everlasting punishment,” so shall it be said of the just, “but the just into life everlasting.”[5] We read that in the creation of the world God did not rest till the seventh day: “He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.”[6] Why was that? Was it because He had come to the end of His work? No, says St. Anselm; but because that day was a figure and image of heavenly glory. In the history of all the other days mention is made of morning and evening: “And there was evening and morning, one day;”[7] “and the evening and morning were the second day,” the third, the fourth, the fifth,
- ↑ Tanquara pulvis, quem projicit ventus a facie terræ.—Ps. i. 4.
- ↑ Vidi impium superexaltatum, et elevatum sicut cedros Libani. Et transivi, et ecce non erat; et quæsivi eum, et non est inventus locus ejus.—Ibid. xxxvi. 35, 36.
- ↑ Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas.—Eccles. xii. 8.
- ↑ Regni ejus non erit finis.—Luke i. 33.
- ↑ Ibunt hi in supplicium æternum: justi autem in vitam æternam.—Matt. xxv. 46.
- ↑ Requievit die septimo ab universe opere, quod patrarat.—Gen. ii. 2.
- ↑ Factumque est vespero et mane, dies unus.—Ibid. i. 5.
