attached to the vanities of the world and to their own will; as impatient and peevish, talkative and uncharitable, slothful and idle, as if they never communicated! Oh! how much have those to fear, who thus destroy with one hand what they build up with the other! Such persons injure the cause of religion much more than declared sinners. A young person who frequents the sacraments without becoming more faithful to God, more useful and amiable in the domestic circle, and more edifying to others, gives more scandal than those, whose heads, it is true, appear turned with the vanities and pleasures of the world, but whose example has no weight, because they never received the benefit of instruction, the help of the sacraments, or perhaps even the light of faith. Consider these truths seriously: beg of God most earnestly to penetrate your heart with a holy fear of the account you will have to render for the very Communion you have just made. Resolve to make every effort necessary on your part for profiting of so great a grace; be on your guard against your accustomed faults; endeavour at least to lesson their number, that when you next communicate, your divine Lord may have no cause to reproach and punish you like the slothful servant of the Gospel. O my God! by that infinite mercy which caused thee to die for my salvation, and that infinite love which induced thee to visit me in thy adorable Sacrament, deign to preserve me from exposing myself by negligence or sloth to the loss of the blessing I have received.
Third Point. — After having seriously considered the ingratitude and misfortune of relapsing sinners, you must already have firmly resolved never to become one of their unhappy number. This firm, deter-
