dom of heaven if thou diest in My friendship. Mark, my dear brethren, what a consolation this should be for us. If I have to spend a thousand years, and even several thousand, if the world lasts so long, in purgatory, and to burn there till the end of the world on account of my sins and to pay my debts, I am still certain and assured that my glory in heaven is kept for me quite intact, and that I shall receive it without the least diminution according to what I have merited by my good works on earth. Oh, I repeat, what a consolation!
Merit mortified by mortal sin revives after repentance. Mortal sin is the only thing that robs us altogether of all our treasure of grace and merit. Ah, Christians! beware of it! But even here the goodness and generosity of God have found another clever means of promoting our interests. How so? In this way; when a man consents to mortal sin, the book in which his merits are written out is as it were thrown down under the desk and forgotten; the Lord God looks on that man now as an enemy, and if he dies in that state he cannot expect the least reward for all his merits throughout eternity; he is just as badly off as if he had never done a good act in his life. But when he makes a good confession or an act of perfect contrition, and thus recovers the grace and friendship of God, the book of his merits is again taken up; it still contains the record of all he gained before falling into sin, and he receives it all back again in addition to the new merit he has gained by his perfect contrition or repentance; and his subsequent good works are as meritorious as the grace he had before his fall would have made them; nay, on account of the increase of grace gained by repentance, those works are more meritorius than any similar works he did before. We cannot speak in the same way of sin; for when it is once forgiven it does not revive again, nor is it again imputed to the sinner who relapses into grievous guilt; because God’s generosity surpasses His severity, and He seeks our greater glory, but not our greater punishment. Oh, what a comfort for those who have often sinned grievously, and have truly repented and made a good confession! O good God! be Thou again blessed for Thy fatherly providence! How loving Thou art to us! How anxious Thou art to further our welfare and eternal interests!
God prolongs our lives that we may in-
Seventhly, the desire that God has to exalt us in heaven is evident from the lengthening of our lives. One man He keeps alive for twenty, another for thirty, a third for forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety years; and what is the reason of that?