say, the world attaches no honour to these actions. Thus by a strange inconsistency people would fain obtain the rewards of the saints, while they are ashamed of their actions; yet, such is the homage that religion extorts, that they attempt to conceal their shame under an affectation of veneration.

This secret shame of the practices of religion which, however, you dare not proclaim, you must overcome among your other enemies, if you wish to be crowned. For Christ says: "For he that shall be ashamed of Me, and of My words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He shall come in His majesty, and that of His Father and of the holy angels." Far from being ashamed of any part of Christ's doctrine, the saints gloried in proclaiming it, and by overcoming that contempt and scorn in which the world indulges against its humility, its patience, and its self-denial, they have become the friends of Jesus Christ and the partakers of His glory.

There is still another consideration of this subject well worthy of your attention. Now that they are in the enjoyment of eternal bliss, have they entirely forgotten their connections upon earth? Do they feel no interest for those they have left behind, or do they possess no power of intercession with the Redeemer who has honoured them with His friendship? If all connection between them and us is severed, what becomes of the article of the communion of saints, which all Christians profess in reciting their common creed? Is "I believe in the communion of saints" an empty and unmeaning sound, or does it not mean that all the members of Christ's Body are connected through Him, their common Head, by mutual interchanges of benefits and

'S. Luke, ix. 26.

of suffering? If so, then the connection between them and us is not broken, but rather brought closer together. No; I cannot believe that the charity which warmed their hearts upon earth has grown cold as they approached its source; nay, has been utterly extinguished in the bosom of charity itself. But their charity may be warm, yet their power of succouring us ineffectual. I cannot forget, however, that they are the friends of God, nor shall I easily believe that those, whose prayers were heard from earth, while they were yet in danger of forfeiting God's friendship, should be now disregarded in heaven, when that friendship is firm and secure. What! The Israelites were spared the infliction of God's vengeance on account of the interposition of Moses, who yet, in punishment for his sins, was not permitted to enter the Land of Promise. And can I think that every saint in heaven, who is more honoured than Moses was then, does not possess a similar influence? God accepted the penance of Job for his friends; nay, they were required by God Himself as a condition of pardon, to offer up their prayers through his interposition. And is it to be imagined that the prayer of the afflicted man was more acceptable to the Almighty while his spirit, yet joined with the impurity of earth, was going through the process of its purgation in the furnace of affliction, than when the same spirit, purified from every stain, was united to its Maker? St. Paul sought the intercession of the faithful who needed assistance themselves and can I believe that it was more precious than the odours of the prayers of the saints which St. John assures us are deposited in golden phials, and which the four and twenty ancients presented to the Lamb? No; God values the intercession of the saints, and the more because it is the fruit of the Redemption of His Son. Can the merit, then, of the Redemption suffer from that

which only proves the more its richness and its magnificence? Who ever conceived a less idea of the immensity of the ocean from the grandeur of the floods which it is pouring from its bosom? Did you ever conceive the stem of the tree less majestic from the profusion of its fruit or the variety of its branches? In applying, therefore, to the merits of the saints we are only recognising the infinite source of the Redemption from which they flow. What, then, should prevent us from soliciting the aid of their prayers since they still feel a holy solicitude for our misfortunes? They are not like the companions of Joseph's prison, who forgot him in their prosperity. No; they rather resemble Joseph himself, who remembered and relieved the distress of his nation. And when the king ordered a robe to be put round his neck, and that he should be made the organ of his bounty, were they thought to forget the respect due to Pharaoh, who sought fame through his own representative?...

THE GENERAL JUDGMENT.

"And I saw the dead, great and small, standing in the presence of the throne, and the books were opened: and another book was opened: which is the Book of Life, and the dead were judged by those things which were written in the books, according to their works.—APOC, xx. 12.

BEHOLD, as described by the prophetic Apostle, the awful scene which shall close the long, and dark, and complicated series of events which have continued to perplex the reason of mankind. Behold the scene which will put an end to the afflictions of the just and the triumphs of the wicked, and develop to an assembled world the

strict and impartial justice of the Almighty. Without this last and general judgment, which will award to the virtuous and the wicked their respective retributions, their career through life would be an irreconcilable problem, and the world would deservedly be considered as a place where men were cast at hazard to be the victims of a blind and capricious fatality. Such was the impression made on the Wise Man, from the contemplation of those events of which he was the witness. Beholding the confusion with which health, and riches, and honours, and all the gifts of fortune were indiscriminately scattered among the worthless and the deserving; finding that the wicked had often seized on the rewards which virtue had earned, and should have obtained, he breaks forth into the following language: "I turned me to another thing, and I saw that under the sun, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the learned, nor favour to the skilful: but time and chance in all." Such would be the impression made on every mind that seriously reflects on the unequal lot of God's creatures, if the injustice of this world were not to be corrected by a final arrangement that will reconcile the mysterious counsels of the Divinity. In the striking

words with which I have commenced this discourse, the prophet of Patmos has partially removed the veil in which God's justice was involved, and unfolded a terrific scene, where all must participate in the rewards or the punishments of an eternal retribution. However distant this scene may be, the moment of our death shall decide the sentence by which our doom shall be fixed for ever. Since, then, the last judgment involves consequences so awful, that on it our eternal happiness or misery is

1 Eccles. ix. II.

suspended, I shall endeavour in the following discourse to lay before you the nature and consequences of this extraordinary judgment, in order that by exciting in your minds a salutary terror of God's justice, you may stand unmoved in the presence of your Judge.

What shall be the signs which will announce the grand and solemn sitting, in which God shall be the Judge, and all mankind the clients? They shall be worthy of the majesty of the scene that is to follow. The sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, the ocean, will be precursors of this tremendous event. In short, all nature, which hitherto attested by the steady regularity of its movements its obedience to the will of heaven, shall now, in obedience to the same will, be dissolved and proclaim with all the terrors of its dissolution that the hour of judgment is at hand. But since the mind of man is unable to conceive or tongue to utter the horrors that shall usher in the last assizes, I shall tell them, in the language of that Redeemer who has mercifully revealed to us this mystery, in order to guard us against its terrors: "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth, distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves: men withering away for fear and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world; for the powers of heaven shall be moved." Such is the simple and sublime description with which Christ announces His second coming, to judge the living and the dead. Amidst this "great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now,' while "the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven." 3 S. Matt, xxiv. 29.

1 S. Luke, xxi. 25, 26. 2 S. Matt. xxiv. 21.

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