"O My God and my true Lord, he who knows Thee not, loves Thee not. What a momentous truth is this! How greatly, O Lord, are they to be pitied who will not know Thee! The hour of death is a fearful hour; and how terrible, O my Creator, will be the day of Thy just judgment! Jesus, my Saviour and my only Good, I often think of the sweetness of Thy countenance to those who love Thee, and whom Thou dost vouchsafe to love. It seems to me that one glance of those loving eyes is a sufficient reward for long years of faithful service.

Oh, how difficult it is to make this understood by those who know not by experience the sweetness of the Lord! O Christians, Christians, remember that you have been made the brethren of this great God! Consider Who He is, and despise Him not; for as His countenance is consoling to those who love Him, so will it be terrible and full of wrath to His enemies and persecutors. Oh, how far are we from understanding that sin is nothing less than a warfare which we carry on against God, a conflict of all our senses and of all the powers of our soul, which vie with each other in plotting treasons against their Creator and their God!

Thou knowest, my loving Master, that the mere thought of beholding Thy Divine countenance in anger at the dreadful judgment-day has often caused me greater terror than all the tortures and all the horrors of hell, and that I then besought Thee, as I beseech Thee now, to be pleased in Thy mercy to preserve me from so dreadful an affliction. What evil could befall me in any way approaching to this! Let all other miseries combine to fall upon me, O my God, but deliver me from this eternal anguish. Let me never abandon Thee, O my Saviour, and let me never cease to enjoy the vision of Thy Divine beauty. Thy Father has given Thee to us; suffer me not, O my dearest Master, to lose so precious a treasure . . . ."--page 34

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