Epistle.
1 Corinthians i. 4-8.

Brethren:
I give thanks to my God always for you; for the grace of God that is given you in Christ Jesus, that in all things you are made rich in him, in every word, and in all knowledge: as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that nothing is wanting to you in any grace, waiting for the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also will confirm you unto the end without crime, in the day of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Gospel.
St. Matthew ix. 1-8.

At that time:
Jesus entering into a boat, passed over the water and came into his own city. And behold they brought to him a man sick of the palsy lying on a bed. And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the man sick of the palsy: Son, be of good heart, thy sins are forgiven thee. And behold some of the Scribes said within themselves: This man blasphemeth. And Jesus seeing their thoughts, said: Why do you think evil in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk? But that you may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the man sick of the palsy), Rise up: take thy bed and go into thy house. And he rose up, and went into his house. And the multitude seeing it, feared, and glorified God who had given such power to men.

Sermon CXXVIII.

Why do you think evil in your hearts?
—St. Matthew ix. 4.

All those, dear brethren, who are trying to lead a holy life have a great horror of external sins. They will not lie, steal, murder, or be guilty of adultery or intemperance. Still, I am afraid a great many of us are awfully careless about internal sins. We forget that not only the sins which we openly commit, but those also which we secretly assent to in our own minds, are offences against God.

You can see this in to-day's Gospel. When our Lord said to the sick man, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," the Scribes directly said "within themselves, He blasphemeth"; and although they did not shape this sentence in words, it was accounted to them for sin, as we can see from the reply of Jesus Christ contained in the text.

You see, then, brethren, if you want to keep your conscience clear, you must not only avoid external but even internal sins. Indeed, I think the sins which we commit internally are even more deadly than the external ones. First, because they always precede the open offence; as our Lord says in another place, "From the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies." Now, you will see at once that "evil thoughts" come first on the list, by which I think our Lord wishes to intimate that they are the root of all the others.

Again, evil thoughts, whether they are against charity, or against chastity, or against faith—whether they are thoughts of pride, of hatred, or envy, or avaricious thoughts—insomuch as they are concealed from the sight of others, do not cause the same shame to the guilty person as an overt act would. Thus, being the more easily committed, they are the more frequent and the more deadly.

Lastly, dear friends, evil thoughts pollute the mind and heart, and in proportion as they and their darkness enter, God and his brightness leave. To indulge in evil thoughts is to defile the stream at its fountain-head and poison all the river below.

Be on your guard, then, dear brethren, against this insidious enemy.

Perhaps evil thoughts against faith may assail you. Cast them out before they have time to enter fully into the mind. Many, better perhaps and holier than you, have in times past become heretics, apostates, enemies of God's church because they did not trample at once upon these beginnings of evil. You may be assaulted by imaginations against holy purity. Stifle them, I beseech you, at once, or they will grow in strength and gain in frequency till they have buried the grace of God, peace of mind, and strength of intellect in one common and unhallowed grave. You have all doubtless heard of the avalanche which happens in regions where the mountains which rise from the great valley and tower above the nestling valleys are covered with perpetual snow. Perhaps it is a slight puff of air, or the light tread of the mountain goat, or it maybe nothing but the brushing of a bird's wing that detaches the ball of snow; but be that as it may, the particle, once started, rushes down the mountain-side, gathering strength as it hurries on, leaping from one precipice to another, till finally, having swept everything before it, the enormous heap falls upon the peaceful village and buries everything in "a chaos of indistinguishable death." Yet in the beginning that avalanche was but a ball of snow. So it is with evil thoughts against faith, chastity, charity, humility, and all the other virtues. Once let them start and you can never tell in what awful ruin they will end.

Nip evil thoughts, then, in the bud; and as chief remedies I would say:

1. Fill your mind with good thoughts. A vessel cannot be full of two liquids at the same time. Think of heaven; think of God, of Jesus, of Mary and her pure spouse, St. Joseph.
2. Remember the eye that sees the secrets of all hearts, and Him who saw the thoughts of the Scribes in the Gospel of to-day.
3. Remember that you can commit a mortal sin by thought as well as by deed.
Lastly, picture to yourself One ever standing by your side, with wounded hands and pierced heart, "whose name is faithful and true, whose eyes are as a flame of fire, and on his head many diadems; who is clothed with a garment of blood," and who cries to you night and day, "Why do ye think evil in your hearts?"

Rev. Algernon A. Brown.

Sermon CXXIX.

And Jesus seeing their faith,
said to the man sick of the palsy:
Son, be of good heart,
thy sins are forgiven thee.
—St. Matthew ix. 2.

These words of our Lord must have been something of a surprise to the paralytic and his friends; welcome they must have been, but still unexpected, and to some extent disappointing. For the sick man had not been brought to Christ to have his sins forgiven; and that favor had not been asked, at least no request had been made for it in words. The paralytic himself must have wished it, it is true, for God never forgives our sins unless we desire forgiveness; but he did not say so, and his mind, like those of his bearers, was probably more occupied with his bodily than with his spiritual cure.

It will be worth our while to see why our Saviour chose to give them this surprise; why he did not cure the sick man first and forgive him afterwards. That might seem to be the more natural way: to restore him first to bodily health, and then to move him by gratitude to repentance and conversion. Still, when we come to consider it I think we shall hit upon two very good reasons for his course, and that without very much reflection. The first reason, then, for our Lord doing as he did, was to show us that the health of the soul is more important in his sight than that of the body, and hence requires our first attention. The second follows from the first: it was to remind us that, such being the case, we cannot reasonably expect bodily health or any other temporal blessing if we neglect to reconcile ourselves to God.

Now, these are two things that all of us, my dear brethren, must certainly know very well, otherwise they would not occur to our minds so readily. But in spite of this we too often fail to give our knowledge a practical application.

How few there are, strange to say, who really act as if the health of their souls were of more importance than that of their bodies! Take, for instance, in proof of this, a fact which we have often seen recorded lately in the daily papers. The yellow fever, you will hear, has appeared in some Southern town, and what has been the result? All the inhabitants, who could leave the place immediately did so, perhaps taking the very next train, and, it may be, leaving their property in the hands of strangers. Well, we may think this a little cowardly and foolish, considering that, after all, there would not have been, perhaps, more than one chance in ten even of sickness, if they had stayed; but still we cannot blame them, for we feel that we should very likely have done the same ourselves. But how many would act in this way in the presence of a spiritual danger, though it were much more certain and imminent than that of the body in this terrible Southern plague? Ask yourselves the question, you who remain contentedly in unnecessary occasions of sin, with much more than one chance in ten, nay, with an absolute certainty, that your soul will be not only sick but dead as long as you remain there; ask yourselves if you value the health of your soul more than that of the body; see if you practise what you must believe if you are a Christian—that it is better to die even to-day in a state of grace than live for a moment in that of sin.

Well, whether you act on this belief or not. Almighty God does. He shows you that, as I have said, in this Gospel of to-day. And it follows that you cannot please him or be in his grace as long as you do not do for your soul what you would do for your body; that is, as long as you do not remove it from needless dangers. That is the first practical lesson to be learned from our Lord's action in the cure of the paralytic.

And the second is that, if we hope to obtain from God temporal favors out of the natural order of his providence, we must first provide for our souls, which come first in his estimation. And yet many people seem to expect him to reverse the order which he has established. They promise conversion if they obtain the temporal blessing which they want. They may succeed through his abundant mercy; but the better and the surer course would be to think of the soul first and the body afterward. "Seek first," and he says, "the kingdom of God and his justice, and all things shall be added unto you."

And remember that this must be the real disposition of your souls, if you would be saved. The catechism tells you that the only contrition which will obtain forgiveness, even in the sacrament of Penance, must be what is called "sovereign"; that is, "we should be more grieved for having offended God than for all the other evils that could happen to us." Think well of this, and you will be able to add a good deal to what I have had time to say.