2. Alas! if a damned soul had but one single moment of the time we now squander away, what good use would he make of it! Every instant of our life we may purchase a happy eternity. The opportunity of enriching or amusing ourselves we never miss; but the means of salvation appear to us indifferent. 3. The day that is best employed, is not always the one that has most forwarded our temporal affairs, but that which has added most to our merits, and which God has been best pleased with. Let us always so regulate our time, that God and our salvation may be our constant objects. Renew the resolution you have taken to serve God faithfully; and be firmly persuaded, that the time which is not employed for God, is no more than so much time lost for ever. "God hath given to no person time for sinning." _Ecclesiastes_ xv. "You have leisure to become a philosopher; you have none to become a Christian." _St. Paul._ _Eighteenth Day_.--Use of the Sacraments. 1. The sacraments are the channels of divine grace; through them the merits of Christ abundantly flow into our souls. We must therefore take care to approach them worthily; for otherwise his merits will not avail us, nor will our salvation of course be possible. {193} 2. The abuse of the sacraments is an evil of the first magnitude. They were instituted as the means of life; but, when perverted, lead to eternal death. There is no medium; they must be either our food or our poison. How dreadful then must it be to reflect, that after so many confessions we should be so little improved, that after repeated communions we should still follow the same sinful course! 3. The unworthy communicant receives his own condemnation, and becomes, as it were, incorporated with his own ruin. What answer can he give when called to account for his baseness? How shall he hope to escape, when arraigned for such daring profanations? Examine yourself carefully upon the use you have made of the sacraments, and receive them for the future, as if death were immediately approaching. "Let a man prove himself." 1 _Corinthians_. "There are bad Christians, who are called by the name of faithful, and who are not such; by whom the sacraments of Christ are dishonoured and profaned." _St. Augustine._ _Nineteenth Day_.--On the Mass. 1. A sacrifice is an exterior or visible offering made by a lawful minister to God alone, in testimony of his supreme dominion. Our absolute dependance on God, and the homage we owe him, render sacrifice essential to religion. Hence, from the beginning of the world it has been always offered: Abel, Noah, Melchisedech, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have sacrificed to the Almighty; and a variety of sacrifices were prescribed in the written law of Moses. {194}