Let me end with a slight paraphrase of the text, such as we may imagine our Lord, were he now on earth, might use: "And when Jesus was come into the house of death, and saw the silks and the satins, and the worldly display, and the multitude making a tumult, and the horses and the carriages, and the garlands and the wreaths, and the feasting, he said: Give place, give place to me and to my church; and may the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen." Rev. Algernon A. Brown. --------------------- Sermon CXXXIX. _Many walk, of whom I have told you often (and now tell you weeping) that they are enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame: who mind earthly things._ --Philippians iii. 18, 19. {464} Here St. Paul gives us, dear brethren, a rule by which we may know, by their manner of living, the difference between the bad and the good anywhere in the world. This rule, however, shows us also who is a bad Christian and who is a good one. For it is too true that we can find many, calling themselves Catholics, who hate the cross, who find their happiness in sensuality, who love this world more than they love God, and who make a boast of their sins and crimes. The end of these is indeed destruction and eternal ruin. Now, who are they? One need not go far to find them. They are those who are boasting about how much they can eat and drink more than another. They are those who try to drink others drunk, and then brag about it. They even make a laughing-stock of the poor, wretched man or woman who can't stand as much as they can. Neither are they to be found only among the men who almost live around and in grog-shops. Young men of great respectability and old gray-headed parents, of high position in society, do these things. They even look with contempt upon him who can't sin as much and as boldly as they do. More than all, the poor man feels ashamed and blushes because he is not superior to them in this kind of wickedness. In the same way do some boast of their impurities, and their lying and swindling, in a business way, as they call it. These indeed glory in that which is a shame to the heathen. How much more, indeed, then, is this a shame to him who calls himself a Christian. {465}