of the alchemist. The true Christian also "has his temptations; he has to fight with his own concupiscence, with the world, with the devil. But he is not careless and thoughtless; on the contrary, he is watchful and serious; in prayer he meditates upon religious truths and by the grace of God his faith becomes fervent and lively, so that he does not fall into grievous sin, out makes steady progress in the way of perfection. The bad and thoughtless Christian, on the other hand, boasts that he believes like any good Christian, but he does not live up to his profession. For, this reason one of the saints used to say : " In my opinion, these bad Christians ought to be confined in an asylum for idiots; (or how can a sensible, reasonable man believe m heaven and hell, and yet go on sinning? "
St. Alphonsus Liguori says in his "Devout Reflections" [1] :
"We are not created for this earth. The end for which God has placed us in the world is this, that by our good works we may merit eternal life. 'The end is life everlasting' (Rom. vi. 22). And therefore St. Eucherius used to say that the only affair that we should attend to in this life is eternity; that is, to gain for ourselves a happy eternity, and escape a miserable one. 'The business for which we work is eternity.' If we make sure of success in this business, we shall be happy forever; if we fail in it, we shall be forever miserable.
"Happy he who lives with eternity always in view, with a lively faith that he must shortly die, and enter into eternity. The just man
- ↑ Devout Reflections on Various Subjects, translated from the Italian by P. Edmund Vaughan C.SS.R.
