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worm of conscience, a late and fruitless sorrow for sins
committed. Divine justice insists that the understanding of
those miserable wretches be fixed continually on the sins of
which they were guilty, and moreover, as saint Augustine
points out, God will impart to them His own knowledge of
sin, so that sin will appear to them in all its hideous malice
as it appears to the eyes of God Himself. They will behold
their sins in all their foulness and repent but it will be too
late and then they will bewail the good occasions which
they neglected. This is the last and deepest and most cruel
sting of the worm of conscience. The conscience will say:
You had time and opportunity to repent and would not. You
were brought up religiously by your parents. You had the
sacraments and grace and indulgences of the church to aid
you. You had the minister of God to preach to you, to call
you back when you had strayed, to forgive you your sins, no
matter how many, how abominable, if only you had con-
fessed and repented. No. You would not. You flouted the
ministers of holy religion, you turned your back on the con-
fessional, you wallowed deeper and deeper in the mire of
sin. God appealed to you, threatened you, entreated you to
return to Him. O, what shame, what misery! The Ruler of
the universe entreated you, a creature of clay, to love Him
Who made you and to keep His law. No. You would not.
And now, though you were to flood all hell with your tears
if you could still weep, all that sea of repentance would not
gain for you what a single tear of true repentance shed dur-
ing your mortal life would have gained for you. You implore
now a moment of earthly life wherein to repent: In vain.

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