Robert Bellarmine

“ You may risk all the world beside, your goods and chattels you may, to weather the gale, cast overboard and afterwards recover, but not your soul, for that once lost is lost forever. What will the whole world profit you, if you lose your soul? And if the acquisition of a world even would not justify your risking the danger of continuance in deadly sin, what shall we say of a vile momentary pleasure, a handful of filthy lucre or an inhuman revenge? To risk your soul for such worse than trifles is like fishing for frogs with a golden hook, or braving a tempestuous voyage for a cargo of manure. ”

“ Our happiness and that of God will be identical, consisting in the contemplation of Himself — the all-true, the all-good, the all-beautiful. As the moon and stars catching the sun's rays are made to resemble the sun itself, so the beatified souls shine like the Sun of Justice Himself, in the kingdom of their Father. The riches of the beatific vision fill the measure of all our heart's desires. ”

“ Poor Mary follows in the crowd, and, as she sees the bloody footprints His feet have made, her maternal heart can contain itself no longer. In a frenzy of despair and with a superhuman effort, she rushes frantic through the crowd. Men fall back in alarm before her fierce earnestness, and on she goes through the parted ranks until she stands face to face with her Son. " Mother," He sobs, " Mother," and at the word all her unnatural courage dies out, all the love and tenderness of her nature come back to her, and in a moment she is a helpless woman, a heartbroken mother again. ”

“ Alas, no; when they shall have passed, eternity shall have scarcely begun. The mind loses itself and stands astonished on the verge of that illimitable space, and the heart stands still in an ecstasy of terror when we reflect on the unspeakable despair this thought must bring to the lost soul. If God were for once to relent and allow Lazarus to place one drop of water every million years on Dives' tongue, the time would come when every lake, sea and ocean would be exhausted in that work of mercy, and still eternity had scarcely begun. ”

“ In the past, when the Church was struggling for existence, a docile mind was the Christian's first requisite, but since then religion has penetrated deeper into men and centred in their hearts. The age of dogmatism is past, and to-day is the era of love and benevolence. To preach to a sinner, even to convince him, is little gained, but do him an act of kindness through love of God and immediately you persuade him into virtuous action. For man's soul, illumined merely by the mind, is like a bright midwinter day, cold and unproductive ”

“ She sees the crowd sway hither and thither as the soldiers, in grim sport, struggle to reach Him, to mock Him, as a King whom she knows truly to be the King of kings; to spit on and buffet and load with dishonor Him whom she knows to be the soul of honor; to torture and torment Him who, she knows, was always good and kind to everybody, and feels even for His enemies naught but tenderness and love. ”

“ For to admit an ever so incomprehensible truth on the word of an infallible witness is itself an act of reason — to deny it would be unreasonable. The light of reason is perfected by the light of faith as is the candle by the electric light — and faith is perfected by glory as is the electric light by the noonday sun. Rationalists and Protestants, on the other hand, rejecting, or subjecting revelation to reason, are like a mariner on the high seas who should throw overboard his only reliable compass. ”

“ Seminarists prepare for death monthly. But no soul of saint or seminarian is more precious before God than mine, and to me its salvation is infinitely important. Therefore I will rehearse my death-scene often that I may acquire the art of dying well. I will occasionally imagine myself in my last agony, with a bandage round my fevered brow, with the crucifix in my hand, the clammy death chill creeping over my body, the silence broken only by my labored breathing, the sobs of my friends, and the priest's voice saying: " Depart out of this world, O Christian soul." ”

“ O my Jesus! when we think of all your goodness, we are not content with offering you the purest of all love — the love of a brother for a brother — we want to prove our love — we want to suffer that you may not suffer — we want to die that you may live. But no; Our Lord is too generous for that; He would sooner suffer Himself than see us suffer. All He asks of us is to come and see if there be woe like unto His woe. Come and see — and, oh ! my poor Brother, what do we see? We see Him in the midst of a vast crowd of soldiers— 'the most savage and brutal men, probably, God ever created. ”

“ Oh, Sin! what a monster thou art! to dare to enter into even God's own heaven; to blight the fairest work of His hands; to rob Him of His beloved angels; to populate with them the miserable hell you and you alone have created.
Brethren, turn you now to God's second creation. Baffled in His first merciful design to make creatures happy in the enjoyment of Himself, He determines on another trial, and so He creates the earth and man. To His own image and likeness He makes him; a little less than the angels He created him. ”

“ He remembers he has a soul and he knows its value, but he puts it out of the way — he poisons it with alcohol — drowns it in the wine goblet, and buries it in the vile grave of his own filthy body. What shall I say of the impure? Ah! he is the worst of all, for he has forgotten not only that he has an immortal soul, but even that he has a human body — he has become a brute beast. His soul, that celestial spirit within him, faints at the abomination it beholds — an angel imprisoned in a hog-pen — an angel and a devil going through life bound neck and neck. ”

“ Forever, never; never, forever, are the words that resound continually through hell and add the last drop of bitterness to the misery of the damned For in the thought of eternity consists the real sting of hell. Desire without hope, torture without respite or end. If the damned could only feel that their sufferings would cease even after millions and billions of years, hell from that moment would be no longer hell for them, for the hope of redemption would console and sustain them through it all. ”

“ The world is like a sea whose waters, seemingly clear and sweet, are nevertheless bitter to the taste and aggravate rather than slake men's thirst — sinners are like fish, cold, devoid of religious fervor, loving the darkness of the deep and its mud and carrion, having no eyes to see, nor ears to hear God's truth, nor spiritual hands or feet wherewith to extricate themselves, given to preying upon and selfishly devouring one another. ”

“ I am not alone with only myself to wound and my own yells to terrify me, but I am in the midst of loathsome devils who cut and tear me limb from limb, and terrify me with howls, compared with which the yell of a maniac is a whisper. I have lost, not the world, but God. i cannot hope for death to come and relieve me, for I seek and pursue the demon of death but it flies from me and mockingly shouts back 'eternity.'" Ah, no! the greatest torments of this life, how horrible soever they may seem, bear no kind of proportion to the tortures of hell. ”

“ True science crys out, " I will not wholly die." The great human family assents I have a soul. We read in Genesis that God made man of the slime of the earth, to His own image and likeness did He make him. Now, is man's body an image of the living God? A clod of earth the image of a pure spirit — a mass of bone and flesh and blood the image of an angel! No; if man is like unto his God the likeness must be in that breath of life, which Genesis further tells us God breathed into the face of the new-made Adam. ”

“ Why fear man? Why fear God? Ah, I deny hell with my lips to soothe my guilty conscience, but my life and heart and soul cry out there is a hell — an eternal hell. For I know that my God is a God of infinite majesty and, hence, that an offence against Him is an infinite offence calling for an infinite punishment. And since I am a finite being, incapable of sustaining torments of infinite intensity and still bound to undergo an infinite punishment, therefore will my torments be infinite not in intensity but in duration. ”

“ Oh, all ye that pass by the way, come and see if there is, or ever was, woe like to my woe." But a damned soul may answer me from hell: "Alas! multiply your miseries ten thousand times and even then they will fall infinitely short of mine. Could I change places with you, your condition would be heaven for me after the horrors of my present abode. I am buried body and soul, not in the cool earth with a rich and padded casket around me, but in a sea of fire which penetrates my very vitals. ”

“ When we look at the saints of God who succeeded in thoroughly realizing that great truth that for each of us the only two things worth attending to are God and his own soul — when we consider the lives they lived to bring their souls to God, do we feel we are following their example? What will become of me, a sinner, since even the saints tremble for their destiny? It is not enough to serve my body all my life, and in the few last moments of my existence turn my thoughts to God and my own soul. ”

“ Again, all through the history of the Middle Ages runs the echo of a struggle to haul down the sacred emblem of Christianity — the cross — and hoist in its stead the symbol of civil authority— the flag. And even in our own times and in our own country, Democracy, like a modern Nabuchodonosor, erects a statue to reason and liberty, and calls on all, at the sound of the national anthem, to fall down and adore. ”

“ But what is life but the action of the soul in the body, just as the ringing of an electric bell is the action of the electricity in the metal. There is no life without a soul. The trees in my garden have souls — my horse and my dog have souls — and I? Oh, I am not inferior to them, I, too, have a soul. Aye, and a soul far nobler than theirs — not a mere vegetative soul like the tree, nor a mere animal soul like the dog, but a rational, an immortal soul. ”

“ Not but that the angels are right eager for the work, for loving God, they love God's images, our souls, for whom He died, and ardently desiring our salvation, they closely guard us in all our ways. Along the steep and rocky path of life, by awful precipices and over yawning chasms, up the narrow way of virtue, they lead us heavenward. Ah, how many times we have stumbled, aye, and fallen! How often had our fall been final were not God's sweet angel there to lend a helping hand! The way of life is hard, and for the most part tiresome, but for the just man doubly so. ”

“ The Rome of Titus and Vespasian lies to-day beneath the feet of Christian Rome, because she acknowledged not the God of her fathers, Lord of her far-famed battle-line, beneath whose awful hand she held dominion over palm and pine — because she knew not the day of her visitation — because she knew not God. Victories and triumphal fame that are of the earth earthly are subject to the earthly condition of decay, but the glory of God's heroes stands forever. ”

“ For the Church to-day stands like a mighty tree towering above all earthly things, her branches and members spreading everywhere, clothed with the fair foliage of her rites and ceremonies, adorned with the blossoms of innocence and laden with the fruits of sanctity, and men gaze at her and marvel that so great a plant should have sprung from so small a seed, that that limp figure on the cross should be the author of so mighty and such a perfectly organized institution. ”

“ Now, if the devil is so frightful in human shape, what must he be in his own native ugliness? If so unpleasant to look at here on earth, what will he be when I see him at home in hell? The lost souls, too, what a shocking sight they will present and that, too, in the dim light of hell, for the hell-fire gives not light enough to comfort the eye, but only enough to reveal to it everything that may torment it. ”

“ The reason is because we are asleep to the main issue; we have forgotten the one thing to be remembered. And our folly is without excuse. For, as surely as the sun rises and sets, so sure are we that the evening of time is coming, and thereafter the dawn of eternity. The dreary rain prefigures the tears to be shed over us; the snow that mantles blighted Nature reminds us of the shroud that awaits us and the decay that is our common lot. ”

“ And finally let your faith and charity be ever inspired by your hope — hope in a happy immortality for soul and body; where we shall be forever reunited with father and mother, brothers and sisters; where the mother shall find her little ones, and the lover the love he lost; where the priest shall be united with the souls he helped to save; where God will wipe away all tears from our eyes, and death shall be no more; where faith is blended into vision, and hope into possession, and where naught remains but happiness and love forever and forever. ”

“ Be not overanxious for material miracles nor over-credulous regarding them to the detriment of your faith. There are, thank God, invisible miracles — invisible, yet very real — happening around and in us every day. There is the cleansing of sin from the soul by the waters of Baptism; there is the cure of spiritual lepers by the words of absolution; there is the changing of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. These and such like are the real miracles of to-day. Believe in them, pray for them, love them, and make them the basis of your faith. ”

“ Brethren, the servant of God to the side of whose death-bed I invite you this evening is in simplicity and innocence a mere child and all but a child in years. She is and always has been a delicate little soul, of great beauty of face and form, but far greater of mind and heart — a tenderly nurtured, gentle, loving little soul, whose very delicacy and helplessness endeared her to her more robust brothers and sisters and made her the darling of her parents. ”

“ You know not if there be a morrow, but of this you may be certain, that the longer you delay like Pharao the harder will your heart become, till finally you are engulfed in the sea of your own iniquities. You live a vulture's life, yet you hope for a swan's death — a spotless being slowly floating down to the ocean of eternity chanting the while sweet melody. ”

“ I am the light of the world." He is the light that enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. Previous to His coming, the light of faith was dim and uncertain, for darkness covered the earth and a mist the people. Spiritually man was then like a helpless ship flying before the storm through inky darkness. It was the period of the world's triumph and of time's crudest sway. ”

“ A good heart is heat not only to the dead but also to the sinfrozen, thawing out the Lord's vineyard and starting up the fonts of human sympathy. Its tendency, like fire, is ever upwards, drawing all things with it. Human nature clings to the earth like the mists before the dawn, but when the incarnate love of the Son of Justice rises, shines on them and is exalted from the earth, He draws all to Himself. ”

“ For wherever in Holy Writ, be it in figure or prophecy or Gospel history, we read of the establishment of Christ's Church, we never fail to read also of her continuous and unchangeable existence. She is the tree of life of the New Law, whose leaves and blossoms shall never decay, and whose perennial fruit must nourish men's souls in the vigor and freshness of an eternal youth. The Royal Psalmist sings of her as the sworn covenant of God with His people, of which He shall never repent; as His throne on earth that shall never fall, as His kingdom that shall never end. ”

“ Much less can we suppose Him to have ever suffered the indignity of having a mere mortal for His teacher. The mind and soul of the merely mortal, newly-born, is a virgin page — an unblown flower that opens slowly under the light and heat of the Sun of justice and truth. ”