Sermon V. Spiritual Death.

"Behold! a dead man was carried out." —St. Luke vii., 12. (From the Gospel of the 15th Sunday after Pentecost.)

What a touching occasion was this, in which our Blessed Lord was pleased to manifest his power, and perform one of his many acts of infinite mercy; an act, which like all his miracles, was not only full of loving-kindness to those for whom it was performed, but also replete with spiritual instruction for all.

A widow is bereaved of her only consolation, a son, in whom were centred all her hopes, in whose happiness all her own was bound up; the pride of her eyes, her joy in adversity, and the sunshine to her poor heart in the cloudy days of sorrow.

Perhaps, too, he was her only support; his the arm which labored for their daily bread, and she looked forward to the time when age and gray hairs should bring infirmity, and her enfeebled body tremble on the verge of the grave; then would he be the light to her dimmed eyes, and a guide to her tottering steps.

And now, alas! he is gone! Is the world all dead? Is it always night? Do the birds sing no more? Are the earth and sky all wrapped in a great, gloomy mantle of grief? Where is her heart, does it beat no more? Ah! so it is indeed to her.

How she watched him in the long hours of his racking pains, his burning fever. At times he did not know her; her, his own dear mother. Oh! how she prayed for him. Oftentimes, as he lay upon his dying bed unconscious, she would kneel down beside him, and take his thin wasted hand in hers, and lift up her streaming eyes to God, the Father of the fatherless, and pour forth her soul in an agony of supplication, beseeching Him to spare her only son, her life, her all.

In vain. That hand grows cold within her grasp; those eyes, which erewhile were so full of expression, have assumed a dull glassy unmeaning stare, there is one shuddering convulsion, the breathing ceases, his jaw drops, and she is a broken-hearted, childless widow. That body, once so cherished and tenderly cared for, must soon be removed far away out of sight, and now, amid the lamentations of a sympathizing multitude, they carry it to the grave. She feels her loss so keenly that the very carriers of the bier seem to her to be heartless and unfeeling. Thus the scene in the Gospel opens: "Behold, a dead man is carried out." I know that poor widow. I have seen that dead man, her only son, the cherished idol of her heart, many a time. I know well those bearers, and they are assuredly most heartless and unfeeling. I have seen the Lord stop them on their way, as they carried him to the portals of death and hell.

Would you know who they are? Sinner! offspring of Holy Mother Church, part and parcel of her own life, who by sin hast lost the life of grace; it is thou! Behold thou art the dead man who is carried out. Contemplate thyself as in a mirror in this example from the Holy Gospel.

The Church has done for you all, aye, and more than this poor widow did, or could do, for her only son.

She has given you a noble birth in Jesus Christ. She nourished you, watched over, and cared for you, in your infancy. She flattered herself, poor mother, that you would do honor to her one day; she looked forward to the time when you would become her support. She was so bound up in you, that she often exclaimed with a truth, "Why do I live if it be not for my child?" Her very occupation, her unceasing labors were for you. How proud she was to see you increasing in grace with God and men, your manly soul strong in virtue; your conscience bright and fair to look upon as the face of an angel, thrilling her maternal heart with gladness, as she beheld reflected there the lineaments of the sacred countenance of her Divine Spouse.

Alas! that any thing so bright? and beautiful should ever know decay or death!

Hear the sad story. Disease came. Sin entered into your soul, as does the insidious pestilence into the very marrow of the bones. And now the frightened mother looks with dismay upon your changed features. You are becoming emaciated, your soul, starving in sickness, is no longer cheerful with the love of God. Although so haggard and so woebegone, there is yet the hectic flush of the fever of passion. At times in the height of that fever your mind wanders: you do not know her, her! your own dear mother? So low has sin brought you, so far has sin abased you, that you have forgotten your noble descent and your glorious destiny. The crime of disobedience to the law of God has done its work, and that soul which once walked so proudly erect now lies completely prostrated.

Oh! how that Mother Church prays for you! With outstretched arms to heaven she implores the divine mercy. "Spare, O Lord, spare thy people, and give not thine heritage to reproach." Leave me not alone without this only son of my heart, for whom Christ died! But you are in your agony now, and hear nothing. You are not moved to tears, as you would be, if you could but hear those agonizing prayers. You lie indifferent to all around, while the disease fastens upon your very vitals: one sin after another, one temptation given way to after another, until the life-blood of your soul has frozen in its channels: and before your weeping, inconsolable mother, the Church—before God, and in sight of His holy Angels and Saints, you are dead! dead!! dead!!!

Like the fruitless church of Sardis, in the Apocalypse: "Thou hast a name that thou livest, but art dead." [Footnote 37]

What are the signs, my brethren, by which you would pronounce a man dead? Surely, that he has no longer the use of any of his senses; that he can neither see, hear, taste, touch nor smell. If nothing remained to him but faint breathing, and a fluttering, feeble pulse, you would already weep for him as lost to you, and consider it only as the matter of a few moments to draw the sheet over his face, and prepare his shroud.

Now this is just the deplorable state of a man in mortal sin.

Let me illustrate this. If you saw a person walking upon a railroad track, and the train came thundering along directly in front of him, and yet he proceeded on his way, totally unmindful of your shouts and warnings of danger, you would throw up your hands and exclaim: "Ah! God have mercy on him, poor man; he must be totally blind and deaf—he is as good as dead." And so he is in effect; for the train passes over him, and scatters his mangled body hither and thither. Of what use to him was his power of motion? He had the name of a living man, and is dead. So death is coming upon you, sinner, sudden and destructive. How many sermons have you not heard upon that awful subject? How many warnings have you not had in the deaths, ever unlocked for, alas! too often unprovided for, among your friends, acquaintances, and in the very bosom of your family. You hear not, you see not; no warning will turn you from your fatal track. You are as good as dead.

If you saw a young girl walking to the brink of one of those dreadful precipices formed by the lofty palisades on the North River, and, despite the cries of her friends, she continued her walk, gazing up at the sky, would you not say: "Ah! poor thing, she must be killed; she is as good as dead." Oh, young woman, you are walking upon the brink of a precipice, by your dangerous familiarities, your late hours, your improper company-keeping; and despite the cries of your father, your mother, the pleadings of your friends, and the warning voice of your confessor, your heedlessness in sin will destroy you, body and soul, and you must lose reputation, honor, salvation, eternity. Deaf to the voice of God, you are as good as dead.

Jesus daily prepares his divine banquet for you; but, alas! you have lost your spiritual taste for that heavenly food, and there is no life in you—you are dead; according to the words of the divine Saviour: "Amen, Amen. I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you." [Footnote 38]

The Lord strikes you with afflictions of various kinds: disease, loss of friends, misfortune in your business. He sends his angel of death to your very doors; but you are insensible to his chastisements: they affect you no more than if you were a statue of marble. Is not this to be indeed dead?

"You have put on malediction as a vestment, and it has entered like water into your veins, and as oil into your bones." [Footnote 39]

Yes; corruption has commenced; you have become offensive as a corpse, of bad odor, and scandalous to the Christian community. The finger is pointed at you, your bad life is every where spoken of, but you do not believe it; like a corpse, you are not sensible of the disgust you excite. As the sister of Lazarus said to the Lord: "It is now four days since he died, and already he stinketh." Four days! Why, it is four months—four years—forty years, since you died—since you committed mortal sin, and continued in it, oh! unrepentant sinner; and you have become insupportable. You have reaped the blasting curse you sowed: "For he that soweth in the flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption," the words of this day's Epistle. [Footnote 40]

Your dead soul is in the hands of the bearers, your companions in sin, your fellow cursers and blasphemers. The grog-shop keepers have got hold of you, and every step is a closer approach to the tomb, the gates of hell, the last home of fornicators, liars, and drunkards. How insensible you lie in their hands! The multitude may weep, in company with your poor mother, piercing cries and sobs which are heard throughout heaven and hell, but make no impression on your dull ears. No! there is no sound [that] can wake you now, but the voice of Jesus Christ, or the last trump which will summon your guilty soul to judgment.

Will that voice of Jesus Christ be heard? I know not. Will the Lord be moved to pity toward his weeping Church? I know not. Will he touch the bier upon which you are stretched stark dead, and command those companions of yours in sin to stop? I know not. Will Jesus arrest the steps of that infamous woman, of those debased, pitiless, heartless, unfeeling dram-sellers? (Did I not say that the widow was right—that they are heartless and unfeeling?) I know not. What I do know is that, if Jesus is not moved to pity, if he does not strike fear into the heart of that young man or woman, your companion in sin, if the arm of the vengeance of Christ does not fall upon that grog-shop keeper,—no other sound will waken you, so dead in sin, but that one upon the Last Day, which rather than to hear, it were better for you to sleep in eternal oblivion.

"Ah! father," you say, "that's dreadful doctrine." Yes; and there is something more dreadful about it. It is true. What saith the Apostle? "It is impossible for those who were once illuminated and have tasted the heavenly gift, and are fallen away, to be renewed again to penance, crucifying again to themselves the Son of God, and making him a mockery." [Footnote 41]

What does this mean but that, when one has fallen away into mortal sin, it is as impossible for him to do any thing toward the salvation of his soul, as it is for a dead man to raise himself to life. Lay it to heart—a most important truth—that Almighty God owes you nothing; is not bound, nor has he promised, to give you grace beyond a certain degree; while he has most emphatically warned the sinner that the time will come, and who knows—oh! dreadful thought—but that it has already arrived for you, when he will withdraw his countenance from you, and leave you to the fate you have chosen, and so justly merited. Every child has amused himself on the banks of the river or brook, watching the eddies caused by the meeting of contrary currents, and observing how the brown leaves which have fallen from the trees into the stream are suddenly caught in the circling current and whirled about, approaching at each revolution nearer the centre of it. Now, we are told by travellers, that in the vast ocean there are powerful and dangerous eddies of this sort, called whirlpools; and that large ships, if allowed to sail within their influence, are drawn in, and carried round and round, no longer obedient to the sails or rudder, and at last are completely swallowed up in the yawning vortex of whirling waters.

Oh! unrepentant sinner: you are the brown leaf, fallen from the tree of life into the water of iniquity. You are the ship which has lost its compass, and strayed within reach of the dizzy whirlpool. God stood upon the calm open sea, and each time that you came around he warned you of your danger. He did more; he sent strong and sufficient breezes of his holy grace; if you had taken advantage of them in trimming the sails, and putting up the helm, you might have escaped. How many times did he not thus attempt your rescue: but you heeded him not. There was even something pleasant and intoxicating to be thus carried along in the powerful stream; and now you go faster and faster, nearer and nearer, until the yawning abyss opens upon your gaze, and you send forth a shriek for help, a cry of despair. But you are so dizzy that you cannot descry the form of God upon the sea. It is well; it would double your agony to see him now, for he has turned his back upon you; or worse, is mocking you, and laughs you to scorn. "Because I called and you refused; I stretched out my hand, and there was none that regarded. You have despised all my counsel, and have neglected my reprehensions. I also will laugh in your destruction, and will mock when your fear cometh. When sudden calamity shall fall on you, and destruction as a tempest shall be at hand; when tribulation and distress shall come upon you; then shall they call upon me, and I will not hear." [Footnote 42]

There is no help for you now. Your cries of distress, and prayers and entreaties are drowned in the thundering din of the rushing waters: as our Lord prophesied. "Upon the earth distress of nations, men withering away for fear, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea, and of the waves." [Footnote 43]

What is that which is glimmering white like a sail upon the waves? Can it be a friendly ship coming to your rescue? Hark! Tramp, tramp, over land, over sea. Why does that sound send a shuddering thrill of horror through every nerve? 'Tis no sail. 'Tis a pale horse, and he that rideth thereon is Death. Tramp! tramp! over land, over sea! Oh! woe betide thee, wretched sinner; thine hour is come. One last cry, and the waters of iniquity have closed over you forever! Oh, God! have mercy on poor sinful men, and according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out their iniquities. If thy people Israel shall have sinned against thee, and thou in thine anger hast delivered them up into the hands of their enemies, and they return to thee with all their heart, and confessing to thy name shall come, and pray, and make supplication to thee, then hear thou in heaven, thy dwelling place, their prayers; and forgive thy people, and have compassion upon them, and help thy servants whom thou hast redeemed by thy precious blood. What answer dost thou make, O dearest Lord?—"He that heareth you heareth me." [Footnote 44]

Thy words, O Jesus, are truth and life. Thou hast commanded thy priests, the ministers of thy word, to speak in thy name; to stand in the path of sinners on the way to destruction, and make thy voice to be heard, ("Arise! thou that sleepest, and awake from the dead!") as thou didst to the only son of the widow of Nain. "Be not deceived," says the holy Apostle in the Epistle of this day. "God is not mocked." "He that despiseth you despiseth me." [Footnote 45]

In the name of God, then, obedient to the charge which I, although unworthy, have received from the Lord Jesus, I say unto you, arise! Arise from those disastrous habits of sin, which are dragging you down to death and hell. Abandon, once for all, those horrid haunts of vice and immorality. Put away all those obscenities, evil speakings, and cursings, from your lips; of the which I tell you, as has been already foretold you, that they who do such things, shall not obtain the kingdom of God. Young man, I say unto thee, arise! Oh! wretched parents, whose miserable home is a very school of Satan to your hapless children; whose daily lives are as an open book before their eyes, every leaf of which is blotted and blurred with drunkenness and disorder—I say unto you, oh, wicked father, oh, slothful mother, arise! You, young woman, over whose head ruin and shame are hanging, arise! send that young man away to-night.

You who have dealt out disgrace, dirt, delirium tremens, ruin, and the wrath of God, by the measure, to your poor fellow sinner, and upon whose guilty head will fall a double weight of woe—I say unto you, arise! turn to the Lord, and perhaps he will have mercy upon you. Do penance, do penance! and think not to say within your hearts: We have Abraham for our father; we have the Church for our mother—she will watch over us Catholics, and before it is too late, snatch us from the jaws of hell. I say unto you, sinner, you are deceiving yourself with a lie, and your supine indifference proves you to be of that un-happy number described in Holy Writ, who resisted so long to the Divine call, that, hardened in iniquity, God gave them over to believe a lie. Thus, instead of your faith saving you, it will only be a surer cause of your damnation. Oh! you hope in the mercy of God. Poor soul! God, notwithstanding his mercy, permitted you to fall into your present deplorable state. Why shall he not permit you to fall into eternal death, which, howsoever terrible and hopeless, is not so bad, so evil after all, as your spiritual death: for so say the Doctors of Holy Church. "The punishment of sin is less than the guilt."

Between spiritual and eternal death there is but a step—taken every day by one or another in this sinful world—and that is the death of the body; and if it happens to you to-day, without doubt, without remedy or resource, you will find yourself eternally lost; which may God avert from every one of you. Amen.