verance and the grace of a happy death, that our souls may not become a prey to the malice of Satan, but may be safely conducted into the charming mansions of heavenly Jerusalem, there to join the angelic choirs in singing the immortal praises of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, for a never-ending eternity, which, my brethren, I wish you all, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST. On the Joys and Glory of Heaven.

Quærite primum Regnum Dei et justitiam ejus.—Mat. c. vi. v. 33.

Seek first the Kingdom of God and his justice.-Mat. c. vi. v. 33. WHAT a grand and important research is it, my brethren, to seek the kingdom of God and his justice? This is, without doubt, an occupation the most worthy of a Christian, and to inspire us with courage and resolution our Blessed Saviour holds out to our view a never-fading Crown of Glory, and promises his faithful servants a very great reward in Heaven after the toils and labours of this mortal life. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, he says, Mat. c. v. y. 13. for behold your reward is very great in Heaven. It was by the hope of this great reward that all the saints were animated to spend their days here in the most laborious exercises of penance, and the practice of the most heroic virtues. Expecting the blessed hope, and the coming of the great God, as the Scripture says, they contended to enter in at the narrow gate, and to carry the kingdom of Heaven by an holy violence to corrupt nature; their glorious examples should contribute very much to influence our conduct, and to excite us to walk in their footsteps, and to labour with assiduity and perseverance for the acquisition of the same happiness which they now enjoy. In vain do you allege your own frailty and weakness, for the saints were mortal men as you are; they had the same passions to conquer, the same obstacles to surmount, the same enemies, the devil, the world, and the flesh to combat, and you have the same succours they had; you have the same faith to direct you, the same Gospel to follow, the same duties to discharge, and the same reward to hope for; you have been made for Heaven like them, to labour strenuously here, and to enjoy your Maker for all eternity hereafter. As this is the foundation of your hopes, so it should be the term of your wishes and the

and of all your actions and pursuits. What will it avail you to be attached to the enjoyments of this transitory life, and to labour like slaves for the convenience of a few moments, if you leave eternity to the hazard ? What will it avail you to gain the whole world, if you swerve from the end of your creation and lose your souls? Does not the whole series of our redemption suppose that the heart of every Christian ought to be strongly possessed with this great principle, that his chief business on earth is to love and serve God in this life, and to aim at being eternally happy with him in the next? To impress your minds deeply with these sentiments, permit me, for your greater encouragement, to engage your attention at present with the consoling prospect of the glorious rewards that await the servants of God in the kingdom of Heaven. In the first point I will shew you, that Heaven ought to be the principal object of your wishes and desires; and in the second, that Heaven ought to be the grand subject of your labours and pursuits. Let us first implore the divine assistance, through the intercession of the blessed Virgin, &c. Amen.

The many miseries and tribulations which we experience from the cradle to the coffin, prove that this world is not our home, but a place of exile and a vale of tears for the unhappy sons of Eve. Yet, alas! for the most part they resemble the thoughtless children of Israel, who being born in the captivity of Babylon, had no desire or notion of returning to Jerusalem, their native country, but grew fond of their bondage, and fell in love with their chains. If we consult religion, we shall not only be convinced of the strange blindness and lamentable insensibility of such preposterous conduct, but also be furnished with sentiments more noble and more sublime. The Gospel proposes to us an eternity of bliss in the kingdom of Heaven, as a most desirable object, and the most deserving of our attention and highest esteem. It unmasks the imposture of all worldly allurements, and lays open the vanity of all terrene objects; it exhibits to our view the Saviour of mankind with Diadems of Glory in his hand, inviting his faithful servants to enter into the joys of their Lord, and to receive that Crown of Immortality which he purchased for them by the effusion of his precious blood. Is not this animating prospect capable of inspiring us with a noble disdain of all the fading vanities of this miserable Babylon, and of making us frequently aspire to our native country, heavenly Jerusalem, in imitation of the Royal Prophet, whose soul frequently longed and thirsted for the Court and Palace of the Lord, as the heart pants and thirsts after the water brooks, according to the expression of the holy Scripture ?

The Scripture, to accommodate itself to our weakness, sketches out a draught of heavenly Jerusalem, and represents it under the notion of those things which are valued and admired most here below. St. John, in the Apocalypse, tells us,

that the walls of this charming mansion of bliss are of precious stones; its streets are pure and transparent gold; its water is "the river of life, more clear than crystal, and ever flowing ; its light is such that it needs neither sun or moon, for God himself shall be its light for ever. O celestial Jerusalem, thou city of God, cries out King David, how lovely are thy Tabernacles, and what glorious things are said of thee? Whole voJumes have been written by inspired men to display the wonders of its perfections. All that is rich, grand and resplendent in the creation, has been called in to aid our conceptions and to elevate our ideas; but after all, it must be acknowledged, that no tongue can express, no person can describe, no fancy can imagine the beauty, the splendor, the grandeur and magnificence of this glorious and divine abode. The great St. Paul, who was wrapt up to the third Heaven, tells us that there are such transcendent glories there as the eye has not seen, such transports of pleasure as the ear has not heard, and such a fulness of joys as the heart of man cannot conceive. The light of the sun, and the fixed stars, and all the glories of this universe, are but faint shadows, feeble representations, and weak glimmerings of the incomparable splendors which encompass the throne of God on every side; there is light behind light; there is glory within glory. It is certain, that our imaginations cannot be carried too high when we speak or think of the splendor and magnificence of that glorious and heavenly palace, where the whole art of creation has been employed to manifest the divine power and wisdom in the most magnificent manner; for what must be the architecture of infinite power under the direction of infinite wisdom? With what skill, with what glorious designs must that sacred habitation be beautified, where omnipotence and omniscience have so singularly exerted themselves? How great must the Majesty be of that kingdom where the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords appears in perfect majesty, and discovers himself in the fulness of his glory to the celestial hosts and angelic choirs? If he has made these lower regions so extensive and magnificent for the habitation of mortal and perishable beings, how extensive and magnificent must be the superior regions of Heaven, where, as the Prophet Daniel tells us, c. vii. thousands of thousands, and ten thousand times hundreds of thousands of Angels and Saints, perpetually surround the seat of bliss, with sweet alleluias and canticles of praise? O could we for a moment draw aside the veil that interposes, and throw a single glance on these divine abodes, how soon would all sublunary possessions become tarnished in our eyes, and grow flat upon our taste? One transient glimpse would be sufficient to captivate our souls, and engross all our faculties in such a manner, that Eden itself, after such a vision, would appear a cheerless desert, and all earthly charms would seem intolerable deformity.

However, though the kingdom abounds thus with an assemblage of all that can be imagined good, grand and delightful, without the least mixture of evil, yet it is not in all this, but in the clear vision and eternal enjoyment of God himself that the principal recompense of virtue, and the essential happiness of the blessed spirits in glory consists; they see God there face to face, as he truly is in himself, and are more sensible of his divine presence than we are of the presence of those whom we look upon with our eyes; they see him clearly in the very cen tre of their souls, and by the eternal contemplation of his infi. nite beauty, goodness and other divine attributes and perfections, they are quite inflamed and enraptured; they shine and glow with his brightness, and are set on fire with seraphic flames of love. This love transforms them, in a manner, into the beloved object, and by a wonderful union puts them in possession of God himself, and consequently, in possession of all his perfections; it makes them resemble and become like unto him, as iron cast into a furnace, and inflamed with fire, resembles and becomes like unto fire itself. O happy souls! What can be wanting to satiate their desires and complete their joy, who thus have within and without them a vast ocean of felicity, with an absolute certainty that this felicity shall be as lasting as an endless eternity. Thousands of years pass away there like a day, and each day gives them the joy of thousands of years!

ven.

It is this lasting, this unspeakable happiness, that I propose to your consideration, when I speak to you of the joys of HeaO my brethren, what a blessed and desirable object is this? How glorious! How charming! how worthy of a Christian soul to covet and thirst after? Must we not be insensible to the last degree, if we forfeit such unutterable beatitude for a sordid interest, for a vile pleasure in sin? O let us remember that we are created for a nobler end, born to higher hopes, and invited to a glorious state of immortality. Did we but make it our business to consider attentively what it is to dwell for ever in Paradise with God and his Angels and Saints, to converse eternally with the Fountain of all goodness and sweetness, to warble everlasting praises to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to live in perpetual raptures and extasies of joy and love; such pious reflections would make us blush at our past indifference, negligence and tepidity, and cause an holy ardour to glow within our breasts. They would inspire us with vi gour and activity in the service of God, sweeten every toil and labour, and carry us with pleasure through all the weary stages of our duty. In short, we would become all life, spirit and wing, and be wonderfully animated to run with alacrity, as well as with patience, the race that is set before us, as the Apostle speaks; for every thing that appears light and easy to a Chris tian who has an Heaven of endless and incomprehensible joys always in view.

It was this blessed prospect that sweetened the rigorous austerities, fasts and mortifications of thousands of Christians in the primitive ages, and that turned the flames of martyrdom into a bed of roses. What tortures has not the barbarity of tyrants formerly invented to torment a St. Laurence, a St. Andrew, a St. Stephen, and numberless others? They were raised on gibbets, fastened to crosses, extended on wheels, plunged into caldrons of boiling oil, broiled on gridirons and burning coals, and yet, in the midst of all their excruciating pains, what had they in their mouths but canticles of joy and thanksgiving, and prayers for their cruel persecutors? From whence came this courage, this strength more than human? It was because they beheld the Heavens open over their heads. They beheld Jesus Christ, their Chief, presenting them with Crowns and Palms of Glory. At this sight, at this consoling prospect, they lost all other feeling. The hope of reigning eternally with Jesus Christ in the kingdom of Heaven, sweetened the bitter chalice of their sufferings; this was the cordial that gave them new life and spirits, supported them under their severe trials, made every labour seem light, every pain delightful, and rendered death, in its most terrifying shape, desirable and acceptable to them. Hence the Scripture relates, that the zealous inother of the seven brothers Machabees, who suffered a most cruel martyrdom under King Antiochus, cried out to the youngest of her seven sons in the midst of his torments, O my child look up to Heaven and take courage; suffer with constancy for a little while, that you may be happy for ever with your God; your sufferings will soon have an end, and a Crown of Glory will be the prize of your victory, and your great recompense for an endless eternity.

O let me entreat you, in like manner, my brethren, to have your faces ever turned towards heavenly Jerusalem, and to make it the principal object of your most sanguine desires, and the grand subjects of your labours and pursuits. Never, says St. Augustine, never lose sight of that blessed country for which you have been created. Raise your thoughts frequently above this world, and ascend in spirit into that true Land of Promise, which your blessed Redeemer has purchased for you at the expense of his blood. Take a serious view of that sacred mansion of bliss, and nothing will be able to shake your constancy, or prevail on you to depart from your duty. You will not grow weary in the service of God, nor betray such sloth and reluctance in complying with the precepts of the Church, and discharging the obligations of your respective states, if you have the immense joys of Heaven always before your eyes.

The labourer would faint in the vineyard if he was not cheered by the sight of the recompense he expects to receive. When you look up to the great recompense that is in store for the servants of God, you will account as nothing all the trouble