The leper on account of his hideous malady is shut out for life from genial intercourse with his kind, spiritual leprosy does more, for it deprives the soul of blissful com munion with God, and of the company of the saints, not only for time, but for all eternity. Meditate upon this, meditate upon it in all its horror. You would consider it impossible, or at any rate most foolish and imprudent to embrace a leper, to eat with him out of the same dish, to share his bed; you shrink in disgust from the mere idea of such a thing. Why then do you not shrink from the touch of that far worse leprosy, the leprosy of the soul, mortal sin, and from close communion with it?