Perhaps we may have asked ourselves the question (for it is a very natural one to ask): "Why has God allowed the devil to sow his bad seed in the world and in the hearts of men? And why, if he lets it be sown, does he not root out this bad seed, and not let it grow and choke what is good?" I should not wonder at your asking this question, and you should not wonder if we cannot give all of God's reasons for it, for it is one of the mysteries of his providence. But he has himself given one reason for it in his explanation of this parable. The servants, you will remember, wanted to go and root out the cockle; but the master said: "No, lest while ye gather up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it." Would it not be so with us, too, if God should take away all the bad seed of temptation out of our hearts? A great deal of our virtue would be rooted up, too, and what was left would not be very strong and solid. You can see that often. A person seems very good, but what is the reason? It is because he is not much tempted. {110} Let a strong temptation come, and perhaps such a person will sin more easily than one who has seemed much worse, but has really been acquiring solid virtue by faithfully combating with difficulties the other has not had. And not only would our virtue not be solid, but our merits would not be very abundant, without temptation; for most of our merit is gained by resisting sin. Our Lord, then, does not mean to pull up the cockle out of the way of the wheat, but wants the wheat to live and outgrow the cockle. It is for us to see that it does so; for if there is any cockle left when we come to die there will be something to do before the wheat goes to the barn--that is, to cast the cockle into the furnace of fire; and that furnace of fire, for those who die in the grace of God, is the fire of purgatory. We shall have to wait there till the cockle of sin is all burned before we can go to heaven with our wheat of virtue and of merit. Let us not think, then, in this month of November, only of praying for those who are in those purging flames, but also of avoiding them ourselves. Our Lord does not want us to go to purgatory. He would infinitely rather take us to heaven from our death-bed than let us remain in that state of suffering. What he wants is to have the wheat grow over the whole field and choke the cockle instead of being choked by it--in a word, he wants us to be saints. That is what St. Paul says: "This is the will of God, your sanctification." Let this, then, be our devotion in the month of November and all the year round: to imitate those (and there are many of them) who have died and gone before their Lord with plenty of wheat and no cockle on their hands. -------------------- {111} Sermon XXIX. _Bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if any have a complaint against another: even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so do you also._ --Colossians iii. 13.