The Worlds Great Sermons, Volume 3 | Page 2

would it serve to limit the fruits of this instruction to the
single point of setting forth how few persons will be saved? Alas! I would make the
danger known, without instructing you how to avoid it; I would allow you, with the
prophet, the sword of the wrath of God suspended over your heads, without assisting you
to escape the threatened blow; I would alarm but not instruct the sinner.
My intention is, to-day, to search for the cause of this small number, in our morals and
manner of life. As every one flatters himself he will not be excluded, it is of importance
to examine if his confidence be well founded. I wish not, in marking to you the causes
which render salvation so rare, to make you generally conclude that few will be saved,
but to bring you to ask yourselves if, living as you live, you can hope to be saved. Who
am I? What am I doing for heaven? And what can be my hopes in eternity? I propose no
other order in a matter of such importance. What are the causes which render salvation so
rare? I mean to point out three principal causes, which is the only arrangement of this
discourse. Art, and far-sought reasonings, would be ill-timed. Oh, attend, therefore, be ye
whom ye may. No subject can be more worthy your attention, since it goes to inform you
what may be the hopes of your eternal destiny.
Few are saved, because in that number we can only comprehend two descriptions of
persons: either those who have been so happy as to preserve their innocence pure and
undefiled, or those who, after having lost, have regained it by penitence. This is the first
cause. There are only these two ways of salvation: heaven is only open to the innocent or
to the penitent. Now, of which party are you? Are you innocent? Are you penitent?
Nothing unclean shall enter the kingdom of God. We must consequently carry there
either an innocence unsullied, or an innocence regained. Now to die innocent is a grace to
which few souls can aspire; and to live penitent is a mercy which the relaxed state of our
morals renders equally rare. Who, indeed, will pretend to salvation by the chain of
innocence? Where are the pure souls in whom sin has never dwelt, and who have
preserved to the end the sacred treasure of grace confided to them by baptism, and which
our Savior will redemand at the awful day of punishment?
In those happy days when the whole Church was still but an assembly of saints, it was
very uncommon to find an instance of a believer who, after having received the gifts of
the Holy Spirit, and acknowledged Jesus Christ in the sacrament which regenerates us,
fell back to his former irregularities of life. Ananias and Sapphira were the only
prevaricators in the Church of Jerusalem; that of Corinth had only one incestuous sinner.
Church penitence was then a remedy almost unknown; and scarcely was there found
among these true Israelites one single leper whom they were obliged to drive from the
holy altar, and separate from communion with his brethren. But since that time the
number of the upright diminishes in proportion, as that of believers increases. It would

appear that the world, pretending now to have become almost generally Christian, has;
brought with it into the Church its corruptions and its maxims.
Alas! we all go astray, almost from the breast of our mothers! The first use which we
make of our heart is a crime; our first desires. are passions; and our reason only expands
and increases on the wrecks of our innocence. The earth, says a prophet, is infected by
the corruption of those who inhabit it: all have violated the laws, changed the ordinances,
and broken the alliance which should have endured forever: all commit sin, and scarcely
is there one to be found who does the work of the Lord. Injustice, calumny, lying,
treachery, adultery, and the blackest crimes have deluged the earth. The brother lays
snares for his brother; the father is divided from his children; the husband from his wife:
there is no tie which a vile interest does not sever. Good faith and probity are no longer
virtues except among the simple people. Animosities are endless; reconciliations are
feints, and never is a former enemy regarded as a brother: they tear, they devour each
other. Assemblies are no longer but for the purpose of public and general censure. The
purest virtue is no longer a protection from the malignity of tongues. Gaming is become
either a trade, a fraud, or a fury. Repasts--those innocent ties of society--degenerate into
excesses of which we dare not speak. Our age