not spend one quarter of an hour in a temporal fire; and for the sake of a miserable coin that you gain or keep unjustly, you choose the eternal fire of hell! You would not spend an hour in a temporal fire for all the joys of earth; but for a wretched, brutal pleasure, that often consists merely in the imagination and vanishes in a few moments, you choose the eternal fire of hell! For all the honors of the world you would not spend one hour in a temporal tire, but you would rather burn forever in hell than restore the injured honor of another; you would rather be in hell forever than honestly disclose your sins in confession; rather burn in hell than forgive your enemy or beg his forgiveness; rather be in hell than abandon that person who is a proximate occasion of sin to you; rather be in hell than give up that unlawful intimacy; rather be in hell than remove that stumbling-block; rather be in hell forever than give up the habit of cursing and drunkenness? Where is your reason, I ask you again; or where is your faith? Do you not believe in hell? Then you need not believe in God; for one as well as the other is an article of our faith.
No one can undertake to endure that fire. Would that I had lungs of iron and a voice of thunder, that I might go to all the towns and countries of the world, and cry out in the ears and hearts of all men those words of the Prophet Isaias: “Which of you can dwell with devouring fire? which of you shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”[1] Would that I might impress those words on all, so that no one might be hurled into the fire of hell! “Which of you can dwell with devouring fire?” Can you, O luxurious man! who cannot bear the least inconvenience, who cannot endure to hear a dog howling, a child crying, or a fly buzzing round your ears? How will you be able to hear, and at the same time to feel the crackling and rattling of your bones in the lake of boiling brimstone; and that forever? You who cannot bear the approach of a poor beggar, how will you stand the intolerable stench of your body and the bodies of others burning in sulphur; and that forever? “Which of you can dwell with devouring fire?” Can you, O woman! brought up in every comfort and luxury, who so carefully avoid all that might occasion you the slightest pain? A trifling headache or tooth-ache seems intolerable to you; you cannot kneel an hour in church before the Blessed Sacrament, or stand for
- ↑ Quis poterit habitare de vobis cum igne devorante? Quis habitabit ex vobis cum ardoribus sempiternis?—Is. xxxiii. 14.
