[Footnote 10: Philip. ii. 12.]
It is only little children, who die soon after baptism, and persons equivalent to children, who are saved by a sovereign and absolute act of divine power; with regard to all others, God has made their eternal destiny dependent on their own actions. No one of us will be saved merely because Christ died for us; or because He founded the Catholic Church as the church of salvation, and made us its members; or because He has instituted life-giving sacraments; or because God is willing that all should be saved; or because He gives His grace to us all; or because the Blessed Virgin Mary has such power with God; or because the priest can forgive sins. No one will be saved because he has had inspirations of grace, good instruction, good desires, and good purposes. Despite all this, one may be damned. For the Holy Spirit has said distinctly and strongly, "Work out your own salvation." It rests, then, with you to save your souls. The grace of God is indeed necessary. You cannot be saved without the death of Christ, or the sacraments of the Catholic Church, or the gifts of the Holy Spirit, or the absolution of the priest, or the patronage of Mary; but all these things are within your reach, they are all in your power. Now, at the time of the Holy Mission, they are offered to you with especial liberality. God, on His part, has done, one may almost say, all that He could do to make your work easy to you. To make this an acceptable time, it only remains, then, that you do your part. And this you can do. However great your difficulties, however great your temptations, however strong your passions, however importunate your evil companions, may be; however deeply seated your bad habits; you can, each one can, by the help which God is now willing to render him, save his soul.
From this first remark I pass to the immediate subject of my discourse—the obligation of securing our salvation. As we can save our souls, so we ought to do it. Nay, this is our only, our all-engrossing duty; and I shall found my proof of it, my brethren, on this plain rule of common sense and reason, that one ought to bestow that degree of attention and care on any affair which it deserves and requires. Everyone feels that it would be an occupation unworthy of a man to spend his time in writing letters in the sand, or in chasing butterflies from flower to flower; because these occupations are in themselves vain and profitless. Again, anyone would feel it unreasonable, in the father of a family, to set out on a party of pleasure at the very moment that his presence was necessary to arrest some disaster that threatened his family: not because it was wrong in itself for him to seek recreation, but because a higher obligation was then urging. Now, applying these principles, on which everyone acts in matters of daily life, to the matter in question; I say that you are bound to give to the work of your salvation your utmost care and attention, because the care of your souls supremely deserves and urgently requires it. Take in, my brethren, the whole scope of my proposition. There is a work of great consequence before you. I do not speak as the world speaks. The world tells you that your business here is to get gain, to build a house, to rear a family, to leave a name, to enjoy yourself. I say, no. Your business is to seek the grace of God, and to keep it. The world says: seek friends, fall in with the stream, court popularity, do as others do, act on the principles which receive the sanction of the multitude, and a little religion in addition to this will be no bad thing. I say, no. Seek first the kingdom of God and His justice. Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, masters, servants, ye great ones and ye humble ones of the earth, you are all engaged in the same enterprise. God has intrusted to each one of you a soul. He has intrusted it to you, not to another. You cannot devolve the responsibility of it on another. That is your care on the earth. Whatever cares of other things you may have, you cannot neglect that one work, you cannot interrupt or postpone it, you cannot put any thing in competition with it. If there is a question between any temporal advantages, however great, or suffering, however severe, on one side, and the salvation of your soul on the other; you must renounce these benefits, embrace those tortures. If you must consent to see your family die by inches of starvation, or put your salvation in proximate and certain jeopardy, you must see them starve first. I do not say the case is likely to happen. God rarely allows men to be reduced to such straits. But if the case should occur in the line of duty, nay, if the alternative was presented, of converting the whole world on one side, and avoiding a mortal sin on the other, we must rather consult the welfare of our own souls than that of others; and this not from selfishness, but because God has intrusted to us our own souls, and not the souls of others. And how do I establish my proposition? I waive, my brethren, my right to appeal to your faith, to speak by the authority of Christ, Who is infallible and supreme, and Who has a right to challenge your absolute and instantaneous submission and obedience. I postpone the consideration of that love which we owe to our Maker, and which ought to make us prompt and willing to do His will. I take my stand on the ground of reason and conscience, and I appeal to you to say whether they do not sustain my proposition. I make you the judges. It is your own case, it is true, yet there are points in which even self-love cannot blind our sense of faith; and I ask you whether the care of our soul's salvation should not be our sovereign and supreme care in life, if it be true that the interests of the soul surpass all others in importance, and can not be secured without our continual and earnest efforts. Your prompt and decided answer in the affirmative leaves me nothing more to do than to establish the fact that the salvation of your souls is in fact so important a task. I will do so by proving three points: first, that our souls are our most precious possession; second, that we are in great danger of losing them; and third, that the loss of our souls is the greatest of all losses, and is irreparable.
Our souls are our most precious possession. My brethren, we have souls. When God created man He formed his body out of the slime of the earth. It was as yet but a lifeless form, a beautiful statue, but God breathed upon it and man became a living soul. This soul, the spiritual substance which God breathed into the body, was formed according to an eternal decree of the Blessed Trinity, in resemblance to the Divine essence; that is, endowed with a spiritual nature and possessed of understanding and free will. "Let us make man to our image and likeness," said God; and the sacred writer tells us "God created man to His own image;" and, as if to give greater emphasis to so important an announcement, he repeats, "To the image of God created He him." [Footnote 11]
[Footnote 11: Gen. i. 26.]
Man therefore is a compound being, consisting of a body and soul, allied to the material world through the material body which he possesses, and to the world above us, that is, to God and the angels, through his soul. Now, the excellence of all creatures is in proportion to the degree in which they partake of the perfections of God, who is the Author of all being and all goodness. All existing substances partake of His perfection in some degree; if they do not show forth His moral attributes, at least they reflect His omnipotence; and therefore Holy Scripture calls on the fishes of the sea, the beasts of the earth, the fowls of the air, the sun, moon, stars, earth, mountains and hills, to join with angels and men in blessing God. But the superiority of angels and souls over material creatures consists in this, that they partake of the moral perfections of God: they show us not only what God can do, but what He is. Like Him, they are spiritual beings. "Who makest Thy angels spirits and Thy ministers a burning fire," says the Psalmist. [Footnote 12]
[Footnote 12: Ps. ciii. 4.]
They are not gross substances as our bodies are, but pure, subtle, immaterial essences. They are immortal like Him—at least so as that they can never die. They do not need food nor sleep. They are not subject to decay, or old age, or death; they are endowed with understanding and free will, to know many of the things that God knows and to love what He loves; but, above all, to know Him and love Him. Hence the value of the soul is really immeasurable, and all the treasures of the earth are not to be compared to it. Take the poorest slave on earth, the most wretched inmate of the darkest prison, the most afflicted sufferer whom disease has reduced to a mass of filth and corruption, and that man's soul is more precious and more glorious than the richest diadem of the greatest monarch; nay, than all the treasures of the whole earth, with all the jewels that are hid in the mines and caves under its surface.