for a momentary gratification of appetite, thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, broken His law, lost His grace. Thou hast made thy choice. Thou hast chosen sin and not God, and death overtakes thee before thou hast returned to God by penance, and thou art lost; lost on account of thy sin, lost forever on account of thy sin. Go down to the chambers of hell, ask Dives, ask Judas, ask the fallen angels, ask each one who in that dark abode drags out a long eternity; ask them what it is that brought them there, and they will tell you, mortal sin. It is mortal sin that kindles that flame, that feeds that fire, that makes them burn unceasingly, and forever. Oh then, tell me! if you will not listen to reason, to God, to the angels; will you not listen to your companions lost? {239} Hearken to them as from their dark prison they cry out, "It is an evil and a bitter thing to have left the Lord thy God." Such, my brethren, is mortal sin. Such is one mortal sin. It does not require many mortal sins to lose God's grace or incur damnation. One is enough--one final deliberate rebellion against God and his holy law. * * * (Peroration, according to the circumstances.) ----------------- Sermon III. The Particular Judgment. (Mission Sermon.) "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." --Heb. x. 31. There is a moment, my brethren, in the history of each immortal soul, which, of all others that precede or follow it, is the fullest of experience: the moment after death. The moment of death is indeed the decisive moment of our history. Then the question is settled, once for all, whether we are to be happy or miserable for all eternity; but, for the most part, we do not know that decision. Many men die insensible. By far the larges part of those I have seen die, have died insensible. And even when the power of the mind remains to the last, it is extremely difficult to form any true conception of that state of things into which the soul is about to be ushered. It is difficult to conceive aright beforehand of any thing to which we are unaccustomed. Did it ever happen to you to visit a strange country, and to form anticipations of what it would seem like, and did not the reality falsify all your anticipations? Well, how much more difficult to realize those things which the soul sees immediately after death, and which are so much farther removed from our former experience! {240} According to Catholic theology, immediately after death, the soul appears in the presence of Jesus Christ to be judged--to receive an unalterable sentence to heaven or to hell. If to hell, no prayers can benefit it; if to heaven, it goes there immediately or not, according to the degree of its goodness. But it is judged unalterably to heaven or hell, the moment after death. And Catholic theologians teach that this judgment takes place in the very chamber of death itself. There, in that room, while they are