and the dead were judged by those things which were written in the books, according to their works." All our good deeds and bad, weighty and trivial, aye, even every idle word, all our thoughts, words, deeds, and omissions, and the deeds of others in which we were either concerned or implicated — all are there recorded for or against us, and by them shall we be judged. And if the just man trembles for his fate and is barely saved, what shall we say of the sinner? Oh, woe to us if our one-time friend, but secret enemy, the devil, shall be able before the judgment-seat to turn the weight of evidence against us! Woe to us if it shall there appear that we deliberately replaced God's image in our soul with the brand of the beast! Woe to us if while the Saviour's promises failed to elicit our service, we yielded to the devil's empty blandishments! That awful sentence will then be ours: " Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Christ cursed the fig-tree, and it withered to the root — a figure of the blighting effect of that sentence on an immortal soul, for thenceforth the day of growth in virtue and of bearing fruits worthy of penance is closed forever. Nor will it avail us aught to call on the rocks and hills to fall upon and hide us, for the sentence once pronounced will be executed. "And," says St. John (Apoc. xviii. 21), "a mighty angel took up, as it were, a great millstone and cast it into the sea saying: With such violence as this shall Babylon be thrown down," and he continues (Apoc. xiv. 11), " the smoke of their torments shall
