But, secondly, we are in danger of losing our souls. To lose them in the literal sense is of course impossible, for I have said that they are immortal, and will remain with us forever. It would be in some way a happiness to the wicked, if they could, in this sense, lose their souls, for it would free them from the torment of a miserable eternity. But that cannot be: the loss of our souls of which we speak is the loss of God, who alone is the sufficient and satisfying object of our affection. "Thou hast made our souls for Thee," says St. Augustine, "and they are not at peace until they rest in Thee." The loss of our souls is occasioned by sin, which separates us from God, but it is not final and irremediable until death overtakes us in this state of estrangement. The danger of losing our souls, then, is the danger of falling into mortal sin and dying in that state. Now, the danger of sinning is, in the present course of God's providence, inseparable from the possession of a soul. Free will is a high prerogative, which, while it fits us for the highest state possible, renders sin also possible. As soon as God created the angels, a large part of them rebelled against Him, and were cast out of heaven. As soon as He had made man, our first parents fell and were cast out of Paradise. It is only a rational moral being that can sin; because sin is the voluntary transgression of the Divine law, and therefore cannot be committed by any creature but one who has a will, that is, intellect and the power of choosing. Almost all the material acts of sin which men commit are committed by brutes also. {220} See the rage of the tiger, the thieving of the fox, the impurity of the goat, the treachery of the adder, the gluttony of the swine. But there are no sins in these brutes, because they have mere blind instincts. Man, however, has reason and a will, and therefore he is bound to control the instincts which he shares in common with the brutes, and his failure to control these constitutes sin. He has a soul which belongs to God, and of which God is the sovereign, and his failure to control his passions is rebellion against God, and pride. Further, as the possession of a soul renders sin possible, so the proclivity to evil, which we inherit from the fall, and the temptations of the world, render it exceedingly probable. I do not know a more striking illustration of this, than the fear which the saints have ordinarily had about their salvation. Their sense of the value of the soul; their deep knowledge of their own hearts, and of the root of evil that was in them, the weakness of man without grace, and the uncertainty of grace; have kept men of the greatest sanctity, men who have wrought miracles, who have cast out devils, who have raised the dead to life, always anxious about their perseverance, always begging of God the grace never to to allow them to commit a mortal sin. But if these reasons are enough to make saints tremble, what reasons have not ordinary