"If you be determined to commit sin, seek first a place where God will not see you, and then do what you please."
St. Augustine.
Tenth Day.—Care of our Salvation.
1. The affair of Salvation is, properly speaking, the only business of man; every other concern, when compared with it, should be accounted as nothing. The enterprises of kings, their negotiations, &c, are as the amusements and the triflings of children. The important and the only affair, therefore, is to serve God, and thereby save our souls: the whole good—the whole perfection of man consists in this. It would be irrational, and therefore degrading to man, to neglect an affair whose consequences are so great, whose success is so uncertain, and whose loss is irreparable. What blindness! what folly! to think only of living, and not to think of living well! to apply so much time to making our fortune, and so little to the saving of our soul! "What doth it avail a man to gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul?"
2. All creatures are made but for our salvation; they become useless when not employed for that great end: so that from the moment a man ceases to labour for his salvation, the sun also should cease to shine, the planets should stop in their course, the earth should no longer support him, the angels should abandon him; he should fall back into his original nothing. He is unworthy of life, when he liveth not for God.
3. However, the greater part of mankind think less of saving themselves than of any thing else. Every other business is carefully attended to, except the affair of salvation. All other concerns are turned to account. This sum of money must be put out to interest; this field must be tilled; these lands must be let at a more considerable rent. All other losses are bewailed, except the one without resource. Great expenses are incurred for the body, and nothing at all is done for the soul: from the manner in which we live, it should seem that our soul does not really belong to us, but that it is the soul of our most mortal enemy, or the soul of some brute; or rather, that we have a soul just merely to destroy it.
Make now a firm resolution to save your soul, let it cost you what pains it will: be of the same sentiment with a certain pontiff, who, when a king had asked something of him, which could not be granted without sin, replied: "If I had two souls, I would give one of them to thee. O Prince, but as I have only one, I do not choose to forfeit it."
"Moreover, one thing is necessary."
Luke, x.
"Where there is the loss of salvation,
there surely there can be no gain."
St. Euch.