heard the voice of the poor." [Footnote 109] [Footnote 109: Job xxxiv. 26, 28.] You thought in your sin that you were stronger than God. Now He has rebuked you by sorrow on the sick bed, and has made all your bones to wither. Bread is become abominable to you, and to your soul the meat which before you desired. You have trampled on God's holy law; you would not go to Mass to worship Him. Now, though you would gladly go any distance, and suffer any pain to be present at it, you are denied that joy and consolation. You are as one upon whom the church doors are closed, for whom the altar is thrown down, and the priest departed. "In whatsoever a man sins," says the Holy Scripture, "in that also shall he be punished." {299} Sickness has come upon you. Why? In mercy, God sees how indifferent you have become to Him. He sees how your soul has become absorbed in worldly things. Your heart is following after strange gods, and your footsteps are leading down to hell. As Eliu said to Job, "Your guardian angel has spoken to God for you, and said, Deliver him, that he may not go down to corruption." and God in mercy has heard his prayers, and your way is stopped. It is because God loves you, and would save you, that this has come upon you. In the days of pain, and during the long, feverish nights, you will remember God. In your anguish you will turn to Him for comfort, and in your fear you will put your trust in Him. This world has had too much of your heart. On a sick bed you will be able to judge how much it is worth. You will condemn the vanity of your life. The past will be repented of. New resolutions will be made. You will come back to health with a refreshed and chastened spirit. What the friend of Job said to him, you will say of yourself: "My flesh is consumed with punishments, that I may return to the days of my youth. I will pray to God, and He will be gracious to me: and I shall see His face with joy. When I look upon men, I shall say, I have sinned, and indeed I have offended, and I have not received what I deserved, hath delivered my soul from going into destruction, that it may live and see the light." [Footnote 110] [Footnote 110: Job xxxiii. 25-28.] {300} Yes, my dear brethren, I think this is the cause of a great deal of the sickness that is sent upon us. The fever, the cholera, the accident, are good preachers, and they make themselves heard. I do not wonder, then, to see men compelled to listen to their threatening tones, and their souls terrified at their menacing gestures of death, and their eloquent descriptions of the coffin and the grave. The words of God's appointed preacher fall unheeded upon their ears. As long as they have strength enough to hear us, they have courage enough to disobey us. But God shows them a vision of a newly made grave, and causes their feet to totter upon its brink, that they may not go down into it unabsolved.