needle does the thread, so that love can neither enter nor come forth from the soul unless preceded by a salutary fear." Such being the case, let us reflect a while on that terrible sentence of the Gospel: " In the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers: gather up the cockle and bind it into bundles to burn." According to Christ's own explanation God is the sower of the seed; His field, men's souls; His servants, the Church's ministers; His enemy, the devil; the cockle, sinners; and the harvest, the end of the world, when God's angels shall cast the wicked into hell to be burned forever.
Brethren, is there a hell? The world seems strangely divided on this subject. Some admit it, but they contend that hell will cease to exist after the General Judgment. Others say there is a hell, but they hold that out of hell there is redemption even for the devils. Others still go so far as to deny there is a hell at all. But our holy religion lays it down as an article of faith, and common sense, supplying a reason for the faith that is in us, asserts that there is a hell, an eternal hell. Holy Writ, the infallible word of God, in both Old and New Testaments, teems with allusions to the existence of hell. We find it spoken of first in respect to the rebel angels, where Christ says: " I saw Lucifer, like a thunderbolt, fall from heaven." And whither did he fall? We find the answer in the words God will address to the rebel souls on the judgment day: " Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels." There is
