To-day, dear friends, the Church clock warns you again. The Church herself cries to you to cast "off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light." Give ear, then, while there is yet life and hope. Have you been negligent? "Better late than never"; _now_ is the time to mend. {471} Have you been a drunkard? _Now_ "be sober and watch." Have you neglected your children? Begin to care for them as you should. Have you neglected the sacraments? Come, prepare at once to receive them worthily. Whatever your state may be, remember--judgment is coming; death is at hand! Maybe God's clock in heaven already points, for you, at the last hour; maybe this is the last time that you will be _warned_, and then the clock will _strike_ and you will be in eternity. Time and tide are rushing on. Every tick of the clock brings you nearer heaven or nearer hell. Oh! then prepare yourself for the great day, that so when time _is_ dead and gone; when the great clock strikes for the _last_ time, you may be found ready, and go in with Jesus to his marriage feast. Rev. Algernon A. Brown. ----------------------------- Sermon CXLI. _That you may walk worthy of God._ --Colossians i. 10. "Brethren," says St. Paul, in the Epistle of this Sunday, "we cease not to pray for you, ... that you may walk worthy of God." These words may, no doubt, be understood to mean that we should live in such a way as to be worthy to receive God in his Real Presence at the time of Holy Communion, and by his grace at all times; and, finally, to receive him, and to be received by him, in his eternal kingdom of glory. But there is another sense, perhaps a more natural one, and certainly a more special one, in which we may understand them. {472} This sense is, that we should live in a way worthy of, and suitable to, the dignity and the favor which he has conferred upon us, in making or considering us worthy, as the apostle goes on to say, "to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light"--that is in bringing us into, and making us members of, his one, true, and Holy Catholic Church. In other words, that we should behave in such a way as to be creditable to him and to his holy church, to which we belong. Now, this is a point the importance of which cannot be overrated, and which we are too apt to forget. We lose sight of the fact that the honor of God and of his church has been placed in our hands, and confided to our charge; so that every sin which we commit, besides its own proper malice, has the malice of an indignity to the holy state to which we have been called. For this reason, a sin committed by a Catholic is always greater than the same sin committed by any one else; not only on account of the greater grace and clearer light which he has received, but also because God is more specially robbed of his honor by it.