This is, I say, my brethren, a most important truth. Do you fairly understand it? Do you take in its full meaning and application? Let us look at and study it as much as possible in these few minutes; then let us take it home with us, meditate on it, and make it thoroughly our own. {308} All of us have our labors, trials, and pains; some arc heavily burdened with them. To work and to suffer is the lot of all, from which there is no escape. We cannot avoid our destiny; we must make the best of it. Yes, that is just it; we must make the best of it; if we have any prudence, any true love or care for our happiness, we will make the best of it, and not the worst. Why suffer this poverty, this sickness, this worry and distress of mind? Why do all this hard work? Why go through all these long and weary days, and get nothing in reward for all our labor and suffering but the mere means with which to keep up this painful and toilsome life, and to sweeten it, perhaps, with some fleeting sensual pleasures? Why not have something to show for all our trouble at the end of our time here on earth? Why not make it, as we may, into a crown to take with us into that life which has no end? This is what those do who remain in the grace of God, who commit no mortal sin, or who, if they ever fall into it, repent and free themselves from it with out delay. All their pains and all their labors are recorded in heaven, and treasured up to be woven into a crown of merit for such as persevere to the end. God is with them, as with St. Peter on the lake of Genesareth; they work for him, and in the light of his presence, and their slightest actions obtain a rich reward. But those who foolishly think that to remain thus is a task beyond their strength, who pass their lives in mortal sin, and only seldom and for a short time rise from it, have the same trouble; and at the end, if indeed they come to God then and enter heaven, being saved as by fire, they find no treasure of good works gone before them. "Master," they have to say, "we have worked all night and have taken nothing. We have worked in the night of sin all our life." {309} Let us not, then, follow their example. Let us not run their fearful risk of not obtaining salvation at all; and let us also determine that when we are saved we will have a life well filled with the fruits of grace to lay at our Saviour's feet, for which we may merit to hear him say: "Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." ------------------- Sermon XCIII. Fishing For Men. _Master, we have labored all the night, and have taken nothing._ St. Peter was without doubt a good fisherman, and a patient one, as all good fishermen are. He was content to fish all night with such poor luck as to catch nothing at all.