tepidity falling into negligence, yon will quickly bring on your ruin. The example of the Pharisee in the gospel shows us plainly what must befall those who act in this manner. He casts his eyes on the good works he had done, and then enumerating them, he says, " I thank thee, O God, that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or such as this publican. I fast twice in the week: I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican standing afar off would not do so much as lift up his eyes to heaven: but striking his breast, saying, O God be merciful to me a sinner. I declare to you," says our Saviour, "this man went down to his house more justified than the other." (Luke, xviii..l 1, 14.) Thus we see the one by humbling himself was justified, while the other by his criminal presumption drew upon himself the sentence of his condemnation and of his death. This is the plan the devil has formed against us. By always representing to us the good we have done, his design is to instil into us an high esteem of ourselves, and a contempt of our neighbour, that by yielding to pride, we may bring on our own condemnation.
There is still another danger, as St. Bernard says, in looking back on the good we have done. For we will, in consequence, make no effort to advance; we will grow cold in the business of heaven, and at length fancying that we have done enough, we will think only on resting ourselves. As travellers when they begin to grow weary, look behind and consider the journey they have made; just so when those on the road of perfection begin to get tired, they look back to the journey they have made, and imagining they have advanced a great deal, they content themselves, and through shameful sloth, stop half way.
In order to avoid these inconveniences, we must always think not on what we have already done, but on what still remains to be done. For the former tempts us to stop, while the latter incites us to go on with our work. This is the second branch of the means the apostle teaches us — to have our eyes fixed on what we are deficient in, that we may be encouraged to attain it St. Gregory explains this by several familiar comparisons, and says, that as a man who owes a thousand crowns does not think his debt discharged by his having paid three or four hundred, but still reflects on what he is still to pay, and cannot be at ease till he has fully satisfied his creditor, so we, who are deeply indebted to Almighty God, ought not to reckon upon what we have paid, but always consider what we are still to pay in order to satisfy the debt that
