nothing good to say. And the other is the black and hideous demon of hell, that crouches at his side, full of hate and malice, and triumph, too, for he has dogged the steps of this poor sinner from youth to age, and now the time has come for him to seize his prey. And now, as the sinner looks from one to another, the meaning of it an breaks upon him. Conviction flashes upon his mind. He may not have been an infidel before; but putting his past feelings by the side of his present experience, it seems almost as if he had been. Did it ever happen to you to be talking quite unconcernedly, and all at once to find that others were listening, before whom for worlds you would not have used such unreserve. Well, to compare small things with great, something like this will be the feeling of the sinner when the curtain of time draws up, and shows him the realities of eternity. The whole tide of his past thoughts and feelings will be arrested, and, with a great check, rolled back before the new set of experiences and sights that rush in on him. Oh! he will say, what is this that I see and hear? Has Jesus Christ always been so near me? Have my guardian angel and the demon that has tempted me been always in this very room? Ah, yes! it is even so. I have been living in a dream all my life, and pursuing shadows. It is true, as I learned in the catechism, and as the Church taught me, I was not made for the world or for sin, but for God. I had a soul, and the end of my being was to love and serve my Maker. He has been watching me all my days, and I have thought little of Him. I heard of judgment, but I did not give heed to it, or I placed it far off in the future; but now it is here at the door. There is my Saviour, there my angel guardian, there the demon. {244} Once I heard of these things, now I see them with my eyes. Yes, it is all true. The world did not seem to believe it, the world forgot it; but the world was wrong. The poor and the simple were right, after all, and the wise ones taken in their own craftiness. Yes, Christianity is true, Catholicity is true; I cannot doubt it, if I would, for there it stares me in the face! O, overwhelming conviction! You have heard of the answer of a self-denying old monk to a wild, licentious youth, who reproached him with his folly in living so severe a life for the sake of a hereafter he had never seen. "Father," said the youth, "how much wiser I am than you, if there be no hereafter!" "Yes, my son," replied the aged man, "but how much more foolish, if there be!" O fearful discovery, to come on one for the first time, with a strong and deep impression, at the very threshold of eternity! O miserable man! why did you not think of these things before? Why did you rush into the presence of your Maker without forethought? Now, for the first time, to think seriously, when there is no longer freedom in thought, or merit in faith. O, the folly and the misery!