Exclamation X

1. O God of my soul! how eager are we to offend Thee, yet how far more eager art Thou to forgive us! Why, Lord, are we so foolishly presumptuous, unless because, knowing Thy great mercy, we forget the strictness of Thy justice? " The pains of death have encompassed me."¹ Alas, alas, alas! What a terrible evil is sin, which caused a death of such agony to God Himself! How Thy tormentors surround Thee still, my God! Where canst Thou turn to be free from them? From every quarter they deal Thee mortal blows.

2. Christians, it is time to defend your King and to rally round Him in His utter abandonment: few are His faithful subjects, and many the followers of Lucifer. Worst of all. His public friends betray Him secretly, so that there is hardly one whom He can trust.

3. O true Friend, how ill such traitors requite Thee! Weep, all faithful Christians, weep with your God, Who shed tears of pity not for Lazarus alone, ^ but for those also who would never wish to rise to life, though He called them forth.

4. O my supreme Good! all the sins I have committed against Thee were then before Thine eyes. Prevent me. Lord, prevent me and all men from sinning again! Raise up souls dead in transgression: call them with such power, that they may receive the new life they ask not for, and come forth from the grave of their luxuries. Lazarus did not beg to be restored to life — Thou didst recall him at the prayer of a woman who was a sinner: ' One far more guilty is now before Thee, my God: show forth Thy mercy! Wretch that I am, I pray for those who will not ask it for themselves. Thou knowest my anguish at seeing their indifference to the endless torments they will suffer unless they return to Thee.

5. Ye men accustomed to pleasure, luxuries and feasting, who indulge your will in every way, take compassion on yourselves! Remember, that always, for all eternity, you will be subject to the infernal furies! Reflect — the Judge Who will condemn you then is now your Suppliant;² you are not sure of living here another moment: why do you not strive to live the true life for all eternity? Oh the hardness of men's hearts! Soften them in Thy boundless pity, m}^ God!

6. " Good God! Good God! how I grieve at thinking of the feelings of a soul which has always been respected and loved, waited on, honoured and pampered, on clearly realising its eternal perdition and that it is useless to try to turn away its thoughts from the truths of faith as it did while on earth. It will find itself torn from its pleasures before it had begun to enjoy them, for truly all that ends with life passes like a puff of wind.

7. The soul sees itself among the hideous and merciless companions with whom it is to suffer for eternity, in the midst of a fetid pool of serpents, each of which strives to devour it more fiercely than thereat'; a horrible darkness, revealing nothing but tormenting and hideous objects, surrounds it, and no light appears except a gloomy flame.'

8. Alas, this description falls short of the reality! Who so blinded the eyes of such a .man that he never realises these horrors, until plunged amongst them? '• O Lord! who stopped his ears from hearing the truths so often told him of the eternity of these torments? Ah, never-ending life! Oh, ceaseless tortures, ceaseless torments that last for ever! How is it, that men who fear the discomfort of sleeping on a hard bed, do not dread such anguish?

9. O Lord my God! I weep for the time when I ignored these horrors. Thou knowest my grief at seeing the multitude of men who turn their thoughts from eternal.

' Life, ch. xxxii. 1-9.

' ' ' He will open in his tprment the eyes which he long kept closed in sin "! (St. Gregpry, Moralia, bk. xxv. 6). punishment: let there be one, O Lord, at least let there be one who asks Thee to enlighten him, who is capable of leading many others to the truth! I ask not this favour for my own sake, Lord, for I do not deserve it, but beg it of Thee by the merits of Thy Son. Look on His Wounds, and forgive us as He forgave the men who inflicted them.