That terrible time will come, that terrible hour will come, in which all my sins will appear naked before God the Judge, before His Angels, before all mankind. Sensing the state of my soul in this terrible hour, I am filled with horror. Under the influence of a vivid and strong premonition, with trembling I hasten to immerse myself in the examination of myself, I hasten to believe in the book of my conscience the sins noted by deed, word, and thought.

Books that have not been read for a long time, stagnant in the cabinets, are soaked in dust, moth-eaten. Whoever takes such a book encounters great difficulty in reading it. Such is my conscience. Not reviewed for a long time, it could hardly be opened. When I open it, I do not find the expected satisfaction. Only major sins are listed quite clearly; the small writings, of which there are many, have almost been erased, and now it is impossible to make out what was depicted by them. {p. 112} God, God alone, can restore brightness to pale writings and deliver man from an evil conscience [261]. God alone can grant man the sight of his sins and the sight of his sin, his fall, in which is the root, the seed, the germ, the sum total of all human sins.

Calling upon the mercy and power of God for help, calling upon them for help with the most fervent prayer, combined with prudent fasting, combined with weeping and sobbing of the heart, I again open the book of conscience, once again peer into the quantity and quality of my sins, I peer into what the sins I have committed have engendered for me.

I see that my iniquities have surpassed my head, for a heavy burden has weighed upon me. The hair of my head is multiplied more [262]. What is the consequence of such sinfulness? My iniquities have come upon me, and I am not able to see; my heart, forsake me [263]. The consequence of a sinful life is blindness of mind, hardening, and insensibility of the heart. The mind of an inveterate sinner sees neither good nor evil; his heart loses the ability to feel spiritually. If, having left a sinful life, this person turns to pious feats, then his heart, as if it were someone else's, does not sympathize with his striving for God.

When, through the action of Divine grace, a multitude of his sins is revealed to the ascetic, then it is impossible that he does not fall into extreme bewilderment, does not sink into deep sorrow. My heart is troubled at such a sight, leave me my strength, and the light of my eyes, and that is not with me: for my hands are filled with reproaches, that is, my activity is filled with stumbling from the habit to sin, which forcibly draws me to new sins; my wounds have stinked and rotted from the face of my folly, that is, sinful passions have grown old and terribly damaged me because of my inattentive life; there is no healing in my flesh, that is, there is no healing through my own efforts alone for my whole being, stricken and infected with sin. {p. 113} By the recognition of my sins, by repentance of them, by confessing them, by regret for them, I plunge all the innumerable multitudes of them into the abyss of God's mercy. In order to guard against sin in the future, I will take a closer look, secluded in myself, how sin acts against me, how it approaches me, what it says to me.

He approaches me like a thief: his face is covered; His words were softened more than oil[265]; He tells me lies, offers iniquity. Poison is in his mouth; his tongue is a deadly sting.

"Enjoy! He whispers softly and flatteringly, "why are you forbidden to enjoy? Enjoy! What sin is there?" — and proposes, the evildoer, a violation of the commandment of the All-Holy Lord.

I should not have paid any attention to his words: I know that he is a thief and a murderer. But some incomprehensible weakness, weakness of will, defeats me! I heed the words of sin, I look at the forbidden fruit. In vain my conscience reminds me that eating this fruit is also tasting death.

If there is no forbidden fruit before my eyes, this fruit is suddenly pictured in my imagination, pictured, as if by the hand of enchantment.

The feelings of the heart are drawn to a seductive picture, like a harlot. Her appearance is captivating, temptation breathes from her; it is adorned with precious, shining utensils; its deadly effects are carefully concealed. He seeks the sin of sacrifice from the heart, when the body cannot offer this sacrifice, in the absence of the object itself.

Sin acts in me with sinful thoughts, acts with sinful sensations, with the sensation of the heart, and with the sensation of the body; acts through the bodily senses, acts through the imagination.

To what conclusion does such a view of myself lead me? To the conclusion that in me, in my whole being, there lives a sinful injury, which sympathizes with and helps the sin that attacks me from without. I am like a prisoner bound with heavy chains: whoever is allowed to do so seizes the prisoner, draws him whither he will, because the prisoner, being bound in chains, has no opportunity to offer resistance.

Sin once penetrated into the lofty paradise. There he offered to my forefathers the partaking of the forbidden fruit. There he deceived them, there he smote the deceived with eternal death. And to me, their descendant, he constantly repeats the same sentence; and I, their descendant, is constantly trying to deceive and destroy.

Adam and Eve were immediately expelled from paradise after their sin and cast out into the land of sorrows [266]; I was born in this land of weeping and affliction! But this does not justify me: paradise has been brought to me here by the Redeemer, planted in my heart. I have driven paradise out of my heart by sin. Now there is a mixture of good and evil, there is a fierce struggle between good and evil, there is a clash of innumerable passions, there is torment, a foretaste of eternal hellish torment.