This becomes more evident when we consider some examples of the severe punishments inflicted by the Lord on those guilty of such offences. Thus when King David had committed an act of vanity by ordering an enumeration of all his subjects to see how great a monarch he had become, which seems to have been only a venial sin, the Lord sent to him the prophet Gad, to give him the choice between three punishments, namely three years of famine, three months of flight before his enemies or three days of pestilence on his people. He chose the pestilence, and it carried off seventy thousand men (I Paral. xxi). Moses for a venial fault was refused the honor of leading the Chosen People into the promised land, which would have been a fitting crown of all his labors. His sister Mary, for some murmuring against her brother, was stricken with a leprosy and humiliated before all the people. In fact, leprosy is a striking figure of the effect of venial sin on the soul; for it disfigures the soul without depriving it of life. If a visible leprosy were usually the effect of wilful venial sin, men would be as anxious to avoid such an evil as they are now to escape that bodily plague. Then there are the pains of Purgatory to be considered, which are deserved by venial sins; they are worse than any pain known to us in this life. For, as St. Thomas remarks, they are different in kind: the fire of Purgatory is not created for the service and comfort of man, but for his punishment and torture. The examples of its duration which have been made known by revelations to saintly souls are proofs of the terrible evil such offences are in the sight of the just, all-holy God. Father Faber, in his “All for Jesus” says: “In the revelations of Sister Frances of Pampeluna, we find that, among some hundreds of cases, by far the greater majority suffered 30, 40 or 60 years” (pp. 394, 395). There results besides from venial sins a still worse consequence than any transitory suffering, namely that they expose us to the danger of committing mortal sins and losing our soul for eternity. This happens in two ways, naturally and supernaturally.