Section VII. Altar-flowers

The devotions then to the Sacred Infancy and to the Blessed Sacrament have one and the same spirit. The¹ question follows, What is that spirit, or in other words, what are the peculiar flowers and fruits by which these devotions make themselves known in the spiritual life, and what are the particular graces which they have an especial gift to convey? All the mysteries of our Lord bring forth in us certain fruits, and different mysteries differ in the greater or the less degree in which they bear them. Thus we cannot fix our eyes and hearts upon any part of the Incarnation without the royal spirit of mortification and self-sacrifice passing into us. Jesus, in every shape and under every view, is the doctor of penance and mortification. Whatever else He teaches, that goes along with every lesson. Every lesson presupposes it, and re acts back upon it. Except a man take up his cross daily and so follow Jesus, he cannot follow Him at all. Neither is it enough that the mortifications should come upon him from without. There must be mortifications also of his own seeking. Neither is it enough that they should be interior mortifications only, such as those of the will and feelings; but the flesh must suffer also. There must be bodily mortifications, if the virtue of the Incarnation is to pass into our mortifications at all. And although interior mortifications are in themselves far more valuable, yet at the present time, because of the softness of our ways and the manifold inventions of our effeminacy, it seems more needful to dwell upon outward austerities, inasmuch as without them the practice of interior morti fications is rife with many plausible delusions. But mortification, humility, and meekness, are the flowers of all devotions to the mysteries of our Lord. Those which seem to belong, not exclusively, but very specially, to the

Sacred Infancy and the Blessed Sacrament, are these five: joy, adoration, gratitude, simplicity, and the hidden life. 1. It was a wise thought of Father Lombez, especially when he had fathomed the subject of " Interior Peace," to add bis supplemental treatise on Christian joy: neither was it without the guidance of the unerring Spirit that St. Paul enumerates joy among the first of the fruits of the Holy Ghost. It is doing no injury to the mortified character of high sanctity, to say, that joy is one of the most important elements in the spiritual life, and nothing is more common than cases in which persons are kept back from great attainments, or from persevering in their vocations, by the want of joy. They say there was an epoch on this planet of ours when, from the quantity of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, the growth of vegetation was magnificently prolific, rapid, and gigantic. Just so is it in the spiritual life when everything breathes of holy and supernatural joy. It is the atmosphere of heroic virtues. Perhaps we ourselves may have had seasons of such gladness, and now it may be forfeited because we did not correspond to the grace, and on looking back on what we did and what we were then, we almost think we were " giants in those days." Indeed it seems from the constitution of our nature, and more particularly under the law of grace, which is a law of sonship, not of servitude, that joy is almost an indispensable condition of generous or long-sustained action. It is very hard t(keep up and continue any practice, however easy in itself, when such practice is based only on a natural motive. It is a constant effort, because of the incurable weakness and besetting languor of our nature in matters spiritual; and hence it is that the sacraments, which tell upon this weakness and languor, are all of them in a very intimate sense fountains of joy and sweetness to the human heart. Take, for example, the case of prayer, and ask the experience of any number of spiritual persons; and they will tell you that so great and almost unconquerable are the difficulties of the privilege of prayer, and so manifold the repugnances which beset it, that nothing but a spirit of joy enables a man to triumph, to persevere, and to break his way into higher and higher degrees of its perfection. Even interior trials are, for the most part — certain special temporary phenomena of the Saints excepted — accom panied by joy, though it is often very hidden, and as little sensible as it can be consistently with its performing its functions rightly. And it is quite a characteristic of those spiritual writers, who are the most distinguished for a supernatural discretion and an abundant measure of the gift of counsel, that they are very cautious in speaking lightly of sensible devotion and sweetness in prayer, and very slow to admit that the subtraction of it is, in this or that case, a mystical operation of God, and not rather a punishment for infidelities in the spiritual life. Consolation is so much easier than correction, that it is no wonder directors should so much delight in it, especially finding, as they do, the astonishing rarity of disinterested souls who really seek God alone. And many a soul, to its huge loss, is dismissed from the confessional almost proud of a subtraction of sensible devotion which, they are told, implies some special operations of the Holy Spirit in their souls, when they needed salt and vinegar in wounds which over-talking, or a love of pleasure, or a thirst of praise, or a facility to omit their spiritual exercises, or a trifling acidity in their domestic circle, have really caused.

It cannot be too often repeated that it is no honour to holy mortification to think or Bpeak lightly of the sweet-ne.-s, and the balm, and the fragrance of spiritual joy. \ Gentleness and softness, says Surin, were the graces jour Lord most desired that we should copy in Himself; feind certainly, whether we look at the edification of others, for the sanctification of ourselves, or of the glory our lives *may give to God, we shall perceive that nothing can rank in importance before gentleness of manner and sweetness of demeanour towards otlfcrs. Answer peaceable things with 'mildness, says the Wise Man, and let there be no acid feeling in thy soul, and thou shalt be as the obedient eon of the Most High, and He will have mercy on thee more than a mother. Now it is quite notorious that joy is of all things the one which most helps us in sustaining this equable sweetness towards others. When we are joyful, nothing comes amiss to us. Nothing takes us by surprise or throws us off our guard. Unkindly interpre tations of other men's deeds and words seem unnatural to us; and we lose our facility of judging harshly and of suspecting unreasonably. No matter what duty we are unexpectedly called upon to do, no matter what little unforseen disappointments come upon us, no matter what sudden provocations to petulance and irritability assail us, all seems to come right. There is no shadow in our souls under which we can sit and be morose; for the grace of joy is as universal as the strong sunshine of a fine day.

If a tree's roots are fastened so tightly in the tenacious clay that the wind cannot stir them, it will not grow; it will hardly clothe itself with leaves. If its stem is nip ped by injudicious ties, it cannot swell in girth. If it is crowded in a dense plantation, it cannot branch forth and O make a pleasant shade, but it shoots up infirm and lank and graceless. So is it with the soul when it wants liberty of spirit. It cannot make room for itself amid its numerous duties and its various avocations. Helps be come hindrances, sacraments formalities, fervours scruples, and the order of rule and habit instead of being a facility of expansion, grows into a chain of bondage and pusillanimity. All this is from want of liberty of spirit, that holy supernatural freedom which alone can unite the seemingly incompatible qualities of the spiritual life, giving the reins to the familiarity of love while the hand is firm on the curb of fear, associating with the ready charity, which is disengaged at all hours when wanted, a scrupulous and faithful subjection to the yoke of rule and the regularity of observance. But it is joy alone which can give this liberty of spirit. There are no ways cut and dried by which we can attain it, no discernible degrees by which we can name, distinguish, and mount them one by one, no receipt which is specific for the obtaining of it. It is a spirit, an instinct, a genius, an indefinable grace. It is in fact the operation of spiritual joy, the result of joy, what joy is and produces in the ascetical life.

But these are not the only uses of joy in the spiritual life. The whole fabric of mortification rests upon it. We cherish our joy in order to nurture our mortified spirit, and we practice austerities in order to increase our joy. Even punishment, when it is over, brings forth joy, a joy that without the punishment would never have been; and the more ample and severe the chastisement the keener and more childlike the joy. Is not this what every one pays who uses instruments of penance? Self-love is the filth, the squallor, the confinement, the poverty, the depression, the bad air of the spiritual life, and mortification is our emancipation from it all. What wonder it should be so joyous? Did we, like the Gulatians, be^in well, and run bravely, and are we limping now, and weary, and galled, and out of heart in our career? The morning shone upon us starting; it was cool and fresh: the dew was on the grass, the wind was getting up among the leaves; now all is hot and dusty and disagreeable. No! it is not quite so. This is not the account of the matter. We began with sundry mortifications, and wo have left them off. We are ever on the point of resuming them, and never do so. One while we determine to do so, and then lose heart. We grasp our discipline, but there is no nerve in our wrist. We fix the catenella,but either we are a little unwell, or it is hard to hide it, and after all it is such a paltry penance, and so we take it off. Another while, we think of how many years it is since we turned to God; by good rights, if spiritual books speak true, we must be beyond the downright necessity of bodily mortifications, and have entered now into the sphere of purely interior ones, where bodily mortifications are retained less from necessity than from habit, humility, ind love. 0 spiritual books — spiritual books! how many things you are made to answer for. As if the um'tical life were cut up and partitioned off into so many different states and stages, which all souls must pass through and at a given pace, so that we and our direct*. rs can look at our books, as a traveller looks at his itinerary and says, Now we have got so far; we are here on the map now: BO many miles onwards, so many minutes: just what our calculated speed promised to effect. This makes wild work of asceticism. But we have lost our joy, and we find now

2J6 THE BLESSED SACRAMENT HBOOK that we cannot get on without it. Self-love has made head again, and the interior caustic will not bite. The remedy is simple enough. Let us go back to our bodily mortifications. Let us bruise our flesh and draw a little of our blood, and we shall be as happy as the day is long. If the saints are such gay sprites, and monks and nuns such unaccountably cheerful creatures, it is simply because their bodies, like St. Paul's, are chastised and kept under with an unflinching sharpness and a vigorous discretion. He that would be joyous, must first be mortified; and he that is mortified is already joyous, with the joy that is of pure, celestial birth.

Such are the ascetical uses and fruits of joy. How much we need it will best be seen by looking at the difficulties which beset the practice of it in our own time and place. There can be no mistake in this. Our times are against joyousness of heart. Our lives are clogged up with material interests and the gaudy triumphs of materialism. The world has got upon an inclined plane, and is spinning down it with a precipitation which affects every one of us: even the Church must feel it, and suffer from it, and be giddy and sick at heart with the haste and hurry and passionate lawlessness of it all, There is no time to be sober, tranquil, cool, or at peace; BO there can be no joy. Moreover we are impeded with accumulated business. Every one has half a hundred vocations, and does not even seem to be discharging the relative duties of his social position if he has them not. We have all twenty times more work to do than we can do well, and ten times more work than we can do at all. How does all this tell upon prayer, upon standing still and kneeling down to prepare for sacraments, upon time epcnf in profitable reviews of past life, upon the frequent, and longer still and longer resting of the soul on God's Perfections? No! in these latter days the effort of life is grown quite inexorable. We are falling under tho strain of it day after day, and the fountain of joy never was sunk so low. The smile of the free heart and the overflowing frank eye of the unburdened conscience, how do they comport with the grim neatness and the con vulsed purpose and the rigid model-like anxiety and preoccupied concentration of the faces of a London morning pavement, when the stream of worshippers moves citywards to the shrine of the world's activity?

The character of our country is as fatal to joy as the spirit of our time. 0 that unholiday look of English countenances, how sad it is! All life is a forcing of one's way through a dense crowd, where everybody else is forcing his way in the same direction. The overcrowded platform of the island is like the deck of a foundering ship. There is no order and little hope, a thousand cries and a world of useless effort; one law only is acknowledged, one power alone supreme, and that is self-preservation. We are prosperous, but we do not enjoy our prosperity. It is so absorbing that it draws into its vortex those that arc far off, as well as those that are near. It is felt in the seminary and feared in the convent, far as they are from Change, and hundreds of miles and millions of leagues distant in sympathy from the Standard on Cornhill. Merry Eng land! what a mockery there is in that old historic name, which records, like some ancient monument, the joyousness of the old faith and the mother church! We have no joy now, but that dreadful joy which those who love danger feel, when they wantonly throw themselves in its way. We have joy after a sort, but it is in the excitement and the intensity of an earnestness, which is for all other conceivable ends, but which is not for God.

The circumstances also in which we, as Catholics, are placed in this vortex, tell equally against the wholesome exercise of Christian joy. The neighbourhood of heresy is darkening, chilling, and depressing: and we cannot escape from its numbing effects and consequences. Hence it comes to pass that we ourselves are often not what we ought to be, and are at all times in this country, if not our only, at least our own worst enemies. We are depressed also from our own many wants and de ficiencies, which it is beyond our power to supply, and yet which seem to be crying up to heaven as if they were so many scandals. Or we are out of heart, and must be so, from the perseverance of dislike and prejudice, from the daily new discoveries of dishonour and disiugenuousness and shameless untruth, even of the better sort that war against us, or from the inexorable Egyptian task of over-work, or from the enfeebling wretchedness of isolation, or from the constant tanta lizing defeat that seemed almost victory, as our wants and works increase unmanageably just as we seemed by superhuman efforts to be satisfying their hunger, taming their madness, and bringing them beneath control. We live in a continual disproportion between wants and means, and ever to have done, ever to be satisfied, ever to sit down and rest is sin, or something so like it as to make us conscience-stricken and miserable. All these things are against us, as Jacob said of old But why have I spoken of these 'obstacles to joy? Because I suppose the difficulty of practising the grace may be taken as an index of its importance and our necessity. Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament will give us one thing which we greatly need, the gift and grace of joy in Jesus Christ.

2. Another want is adoration: and this is the second flower of the double devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Infancy. The spirit of heresy and the spirit of the world are both alike a spirit of levity and frivolity; whereas the spirit of the Church is one of tranquil seriousness, and of profound and dignified ado ration. Even the worship of God, in heretical and schismatical bodies, becomes either on the one hand formal, cold, conceited and inexpressive, or on the other, vulgar, coarse, impertinent and forward; and both of these noxious spirits kill souls in their own way. The one is more respectable in its operation, but not the less deadly; the other holds more good in solution, yet makes greater moral havoc in the sonh it at once debauches and de grades. Opposed to both these is the Catholic spirit of adoration. Now look into the world, measure the times, scan their symptoms, question their developments; and is it conceivable that even the builders of stately Babel should have less adoration about them, less of the genius of worship, than the men of our day? Were God's rights ever so narrowed? Was the world ever so unleavened with godly things? Was ever the self-dependence of Satan's kingdom more arrogantly asserted or more balefully triumphant?

But we shall see this better by examining first the spirit of adoration, and seeing wherein it consists. It may be said to comprehend seven visions of God. First of all, it is seeing Him everywhere. No corner so dark, no occupation so unlikely, no interest so thoroughly worldly, but adoration sees God manifest in it, and kneels down there to worship Him. The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. This spirit acknowledges the dominion of evil nowhere, nowhere leaves the devil to himself or in possession, withdraws from no ground, but everywhere plants God's banner, and everywhere makes open acknowledgment of His universal sovereignty. Secondly, it sees God great everywhere. It discerns the intrinsic grandeur of all His operations and all His per missions. He consecrates everything. His presence is magnificence. Thus this spirit makes no compromises with the world. It gives up nothing, because nothing to its eye is small enough that it should dare to give it up or barter it away. God has touched it, and lo! it has swelled to dimensions of vastness and of dignity, and has outgrown all terrestrial room. On this account its seriousness can make light of nothing. Thirdly, it sees God so as to appreciate Him everywhere. God is to its eye not only great in everything, but He is Himself the greatness of everything. He is also the worth of every thing, and the preciousness of all things. Hence it puts such a price on God as to depreciate all else but Him ] and in this is its delight; because the worthlessness of all created things lights up with such glorious splendour, the worth, the sole worth, the exceeding worth, of God and of what is God's. Fourthly, it sees Him first every where. He is the first object that strikes the eye, the first wherever the eye lights; or if it is not so, from some dimness in the eye itself, it seeks Him out and has no rest, and notices nothing else, until it has found Him.

Then it takes the interpretation of all it sees from Him, consults first His will, seeks first His kingdom, legislates first for His interests; and until all this is done, it has taken neither height nor measure of what else may be in that place. Fifthly, it sees Him last everywhere. It tikes leave of no duty without seeing that God has had His due. It leaves no place without ascertaining how His interests are left there. When all else is consumed and exhausted, it still sees God in the empty temple. Through the veil of all other things, and after the distraction of their gay bewilderment, its pacific eye is still to the last on God, the end, the sum, the total, the result of all things, and His own infinite Self besides. Sixthly, it sees Him near everywhere. To the spirit of adoration God is always at hand. God touches it, holds it up, and lets it lean upon Him. It has always ready means of glorifying God; passing word, present work, the opened lip, the falling eye, the outstretched hand, all can glorify God instantaneously and continuously; be cause He is close by always. No time is spent in search, ing, nor labour lost in calculating. The little details of hourly privacy, they are all sacraments, all real presences; for God is in them all; and there is only one species under which adoration never sees Him, and that is as Borne object very far off. Seventhly, it sees Him interfering everywhere. God is no idol or image to it: no convenient, passive object of external reverence, to which it can bow or kneel, and then pass on and do its own will and follow its own way. Prayer at stated times, and iucense morn and eve, these, if these only, are a mockery in the sight of adoration. To its eye God's dominion is the substance and the entity of all things that exist. 19*

Consequently its eye is purged to see Him interfering everywhere, making claims and asserting rights every hour, laying His Hand on all things and stamping His mark upon all things, and insisting all day long, that at least in heart and attitude men should do public homage to Him for the usufruct of the very air they breathe and the very blood they live by. Adoration knows nothing of an otiose Providence: in its esteem the dignity of God and the lovingness of God lie in these momentary interferences; and it is looking ever to God, as the child looks to his father where two paths diverge, and it waits for His Hand, softly, and to all but watchful love imperceptibly, to turn it into the way He would have it go. These are the seven visions of God. Blessed is the gifted seer who gazes on them uncloudedly his whole life long! His ways shall be in security, and his heart in heavenly peace!

Now let us look out into the world, and see how far it looks like a society of creatures living, and consciously living, under the eye of their Creator, His will their rule, His beauty their loadstone, His glory their reward, His praise and blame their measure of right and wrong. God's glory, it must be remembered, is in the continuity and the universality of His interference, and the worship of His creatures is the recognition of His right to interfere. What idle words these seem! What is there in the world at all answering to them? How far is the conduct of men in any way a mirror of the One Living Being in Three Divine Persons? Literature is the flower and beauty of human intellect; and what is God to literature, but an ornament at best? There is beauty in art, pathos in drama, sublimity in poetry, and admiration in history, which are not after His laws, nay, are what He expressly disallows. God's place in literature is aesthetical, scenic, theatrical, and nothing more. Philosophy allows for Him as an element of consideration and calculation in His own world, and more often as a disturbing force than other wise. He is a difficulty which has to be dealt with, an objection which has to be answered: and alas! philosophy has felt more or less irritability in meeting both the difficulty and the objection. Science is occupied upon Him. But it ignores His personality, His life, His character. It deals with Him as a code of legislation, as an ancient manuscript, or a disinterred megatherium. It manipu lates Him as a thing, a law, a cause, or a power that has strewn the subterraneans of creation with manifestations of design. Politics have their own way of looking at Him. To them He is a fellow power, to be feared for the brute force it has in it or the wily diplomacy, to be dreaded one while as barbarian and another while as insinuating and astute. He is a state far off, who has hardly a right to come into the horizon of politics or to meddle with the nicely adjusted balance of power, an oriental shah, very grand and very worshipful, but with whom it does not appear that we have any very direct concern, except an occasional interchange of gifts to our own ad vantage. Politics lecognise of Him so much as this, that, existing and being a power, He has a right to be consulted when He has a right to be interested. But it does not appear that that is of very frequent occurrence. Society at large regards Him as a stately topic of misty consolation and convenient bounty to its friends, and as an affair of exquisite police to its enemies. He is a more or less indistinct machine of rewards and punishments, by no means adequate to the whole work of government and order, but on the whole trustworthy and perhaps in dispensable. This is the world's view of God, its five divisions of its Omnipotent and Lifegiving Creator!

But how does our own spiritual life stand the comparison with those seven visions of Catholic adoration? I am not speaking of our unforgetfulness of God, but of our very recognition of Him. Is it not wanting in fear, in reverence, in silence, in amazement, in abjection, and be cause in these things, therefore in love also, and righteous intimacy, and affectionate delight? Listen to Ecclesiasticus, to that one chapter which is headed " All wisdom is from God," and see how far its hymn-like language suits our ordinary devotion. " The fear of the Lord is honour, and glory, and gladness, and a crown of joy. The fear of the Lord shall delight the heart, and shall give joy, and gladness, and length of days. With him that feareth the Lord, it shall go well in the latter end, and in the day of his death he shall be blessed. The fear of the Lord is the religiousness of knowledge, it shall give joy and gladness. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and to fear God is the fulness of wisdom, and fulness is from the fruits thereof. The fear of the Lord is a crown of wisdom, filling up peace, and the fruit of salvation. The root of wisdom is to fear the Lord, and the branches thereof are long-lived. The fear of the Lord is wisdom and discipline, and be not incredulous to the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord driveth out sin • for he that is without fear, cannot be justified; for the wrath of his high spirits is his ruin."

Such is the delight and glory of fearing God that we might almost say that fear is the depth of love. The practical question for ourselves is to consider bow far it id the characteristic of our relations with God, how far the spirit of adoration is our spirit, patient, expansive, sub» missive, profound, intelligent, penetrating, clear of sight, mature in judgment, eloquent in silence, dignified in humility, rejoicing in abasement. Adoration is the supernatural leaven of the creature. Nothing must escape it, nothing refuse it entrance. Not a faculty but it must be steeped in it, not a power but it must be tempered in it, not a sentiment but it must be beautified by it, not an act but it must be animated with it. There is not a recess in our complex nature which must not be visited, searched, and purified with this celestial fire. Nay, it has its proper office even to our flesh. Pierce Thou my flesh with Thy fear, says the Psalmist; for I am afraid of Thy judgments j and when the word of God in the deep night reached the ears of Eliphaz " by stealth" and he received " the veins of its whisper, fear seized upon him and trembling, and all his bones were affrighted and the hair of his flesh stood up." This spirit of adoration should be displayed in understanding, in feeling, in action, in love. The whole attitude of our mind should be full of reverence. In study, in thought, in argument, in persuasion, in reproof, when we speak and when we listen, our understanding should be as it were on the look out for God, vigilant to receive truth, jealous to defend it, quick to perceive the bearing of opinions and judgments upon His glory. For if a man handles the commonest subject, and the name of God be not so much as mentioned, still it is all full of God, tin gles with God, breathes of God, shines with God, is fra grant of God. A mind, ever brooding on God, saturated with the thought of God, and to whose reasoning God is the swift conclusion of all premises, has a science of its own, and is a power on earth to which neither rank nor genius may compare. To exercise adoration in our feel ings, our instincts must be so trained, so supple in the hands of grace, that they become full of ready and occult sympathies with God. They must feel Him before Ho comes, and prophecy of Him when He is yet unseen. They must like and dislike, unerringly, they know not why, and yet the future will show that God's glory was concerned, and that they judged as love and truth and clear light would have had them to judge. Our actions also must be so many lovely-faced kneeling statues, with their hands clasped and their eyes upturned to heaven, full of self-oblivion and beautiful adoration. Every action of a man, whose mind is prayer and his feelings worship, is itself a divine work of art, exceedingly lovely, far be fore frieze of temple or old Attic sculpture, a study more deeply imbued with the very essence of beauty than all the hallowed remnants of fascinating antiquity. But not mind and feeling and action only must be steeped in ado ration, but love itself must be chastened in its self-rebuking fires. As humility is to zeal, so is fear to love. We must so fear that love will reach to highest heaven, and we must so love that fear must be a necessity of our love's life. The very thrills of love must be indistinguishable from the tremblings of fear. When we are startled with love's delightful boldness, when it is hard to believe that so great a God can love so tenderly, when it is a relief to iove to hide itself in the exaggerations of humility, when with a heart bursting with tearful hope that He will not hear our prayers, we cry out with Peter to his master, Depart from me; 0 Lord! for I am a sinful man, — then is our love safe, then is it pure, then is it holy, then is it full of rest, and a foretaste of the eternal sabbath of the people of God.

And how will all this show itself in daily life? In these three simple ways. We shall do but a few things, burden ourselves with a few responsibilities, engage ourselves in but a few works, pledge ourselves to but a few spiritual exercises: so that we may not be hampered, but make life larger, and have more room for God. How often has St. Francis of Sales told us this, and why have we not listened to him? Then because the chambers of our lives are not crowded with intrinsic furniture, or we ourselves misled by spiritual attachments, we do what we do for God slowly, intensely, and composedly, just as He works Himself; so that independent of our work, our very method of working is worship of Him. And is not the method far more to Him than the work? What are our works to Him? Simply nothing. But our working hearts? Why they should be anything to Him I do not know. But they are. He yearns for them. lie pleads for them. He broods over them, like a mother over the little face of her first-born. And finally what we thus do, is done in a finished way, not like Daniel's image, gold and silver, brass and clay, commingled, but all entire and of fine gold, like the actions of Jesus and Mary, and worthy of God. There will be no haste, no incompleteness, no alloy, no slovenliness, no misty matter of venial gin encompassing the bright thing and making it almost more a vehicle of evil than an offering of good. Few, slow, finished, — these are the works of adoration.

3. I mentioned gratitude as the third flower of our devotion \ and it is a want as special and as pressing now as either joy or adoration. Going with modern habits of mind to the perusal of the lives of the saints, it seems almost strange to find gratitude, what we might nearly call the old heathen virtue of gratitude, so prominent a characteristic of the saints. It is one of the marks peculiar to all the saints, but more especially to the founders of religious orders and congregations. They seem to ex aggerate the little benefits they have received, and to make as much of them as if they never could pay them off. St. Philip had a marvellously long memory for the most trivial kindnesses. St. Ignatius appears sometimes quite absorbed in them, and passes on the obligations as heirlooms to future generations of his order. The treatment of patrons and founders in the middle ages, and the courteous observances of the Church towards them even at solemn times and in secret places, is a manifestation of the same instinct of sanctity, and is of course closely connected with the spirit of thanksgiving. This is not our way now. A change has come over us which beto kens something wrong, whatever it may be.

Perhaps we do less for each other than we used to. Earlier times and simpler forms of society may, like the beginning of colonies, have excelled in other virtues more than we. But this much is plain, that we take benefits far too much as matters of course, and that we lose with God in consequence. We are so beset with the notion of our own rights, the monomania of our times, that it actually disturbs and perplexes our relations with God, and confuses our theology. We have so many rights defined and undefined, and in this country, as an unpopular minority, we fight so disproportionately for them, that we come to look on almost everything which happens to us as a right. We see this in others, even if we are blind to it in ourselves. We complain again and again that the poor take alms, as if they were rights, not favours. Now if Catholic theology be true, alma are much nearer rights, especially to the very poor, than the favours wo receive and count as due to us, and as if we were beholden to nothing for them but our own rank and worth. In these days we canonize self-help as the queen of virtues instead of charity, and this poisons the very fountains of our moral philosophy, and distorts our notions of duty. Then again, the different classes of society are so coldly divided off one from another, not so much blood from wealth, as wealth from mediocrity, and mediocrity from poverty, that it is as if civilization were resolving itself back again into an institution of castes, a state almost worse than promiscuous savagery. And, once more, we do good to each other, either through central associations from which the individual kindness is evaporated and lost, or on so small and niggardly a scale, that there is no scope for a vigorous growth of gratitude. However, from whatever cause, gratitude is not a modern virtue; and the absence of it is one of those modern vices against which we must be specially on our guard when we are trying to train our souls on the model of Catholic sanctity. To some it may appear strange that I should make so much of it and treat it as a separate flower of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. But the lack of it is a grievous fault, and comes of a most unholy temper. If a man were shown me who had a long memory for littlo kindnesses, who never seemed out of debt in his affec tions, who exaggerated his obligations to others, kept an niversaries of them, and repaid them twenty times over, 20 P

I should be more struck with the likelihood of his turn-ins; out a saint, than if I heard that he disciplined him self to blood daily, slept on the bare boards, enjoyed the prayer of quiet, had been scourged by devils, and had seen our Blessed Lady. Alas! we forgot the ten lepers, and the nine that were ungrateful: or in these days of self-praise and self-importance, we are like Ezechias, when God had given him a sign, " he did not render again according to the benefits which he had received; for his heart was lifted up."

But let us look more closely into the importance of gratitude in the spiritual life. God's mercy is the great feature of the two kingdoms of nature and of grace. Now gratitude is man's answer to God's mercy; and just as charity to our neighbour is the best test of our real love of God, so gratitude to our neighbour for his kind nesses to us is a clearer proof of a grateful disposition, than gratitude to God, which is mixed up with so many other cogent considerations. If we realize everything as coming from God, then these benefits are from Him; and they come from Him in the most beautiful and touching \ray, through the mediation of our brother's human heart inspired by grace. So that every kindness we receive is a little copy of the Incarnation, a miniature of that attractive mystery. Gratitude also is grounded in humility, and, as usual, increases the grace from which it takes its rise. Heroic humility fancies that wrong is the only right which is due to it. The least kindness seems disproportionately great to a keen and delicate sense of our own unworthiness. The wonder is that anybody should be kind to us at all. If they knew us, as we know ourselves, they would have to do holy violence to themselves to show us common courtesy, as great violence as the saints did to themselves when they licked the ulcers of the lepers. St. Francis Borgia used to walk quickly through the shambles, in unaffected fear lest the butcher? should rise upon him and put him to death, as unworthy to encumber the earth of God. This last example how ever is taking us out of our sphere. We can as little conceive of such humility as of the manner of life an inhabitant would lead in torrid Venus or in watery Jupiter. But it illustrates the gratitude of the saints Again, what warms the heart more to others than the exercise of gratitude? Uncharitableness to a benefactor seems almost an impossibility. Lear's daughters were monsters. Yet think how hard it is to love any one, any single one, with real charity, without judging, without criticism, without ccnsoriousness, extenuating the evil, believing against appearances, magnifying the good, rejoicing in his virtues. It is much if each man has one upon the earth to whom he really feels thus. It is an immense help to his sanctification, a real talent for which he will have account to give. I doubt its being common, at least in its evangelical purity. Gratitude to benefac tors is on the road to it, and not far distant. Then again gratitude is so eloquent, so graceful, so persuasive a misBioncr. It is not only a virtue in ourselves, but it makes others good and virtuous also. It is a blessedly humbling thing to be loved, a veritable abasement to be affectionately respected by those about us. And gratitude makes our benefits look so little that we long to multiply and enlarge them, while it softens our hearts and unties from them all manner of little antipathies, mean jealousies, petty rivalries, and cold suspicions. And, lastly, it is the proper and normal state of a holy creature to perfect himself under the continual feeling of obligations which he never can repay. This is the relation between the Creator and himself. Meanwhile to all the evil and baser parts of our nature it is a real mortification to have the sense of obligation pressing upon us. It is the sign of a vulgar man, that he cannot bear to be under an obligation. And thus in both ways the sense of obligation is a great part of sanctity. A grateful man cannot be a bad man • and it were a sad thing indeed, if either in the practice or the esteem of this virtue the heathen should surpass the disciples of that grateful Master, who, to the end of time and in the busy pageant of the judgment, will remember and repay the cup of cold water given in His Name.

4. The next peculiar grace of our devotion is that of simplicity. Although simplicity is the most inimitable of the divine perfections, nevertheless the imitation of it is an essential part of holiness, and hence it is now presented to us in the Gospel as " the simplicity which ia in Christ." Simplicity aims at one end, seeks one object, is occupied with one work, and loves with singleness of heart. In its relations with God, it puts away all multitude, all capriciousness, all distraction, all attachment 5 and its strength lies in its unity of purpose and its concentration of effort. In its relations with others, it is gentle, open, fair, without disguise, without insincerity, without flattery, without deceit. Now the more crowded and artificial the world becomes, obviously the more difficult is the practice of simplicity: for it is the reflection of the immutable and spotless truth of God Himself Scripture reveals to us quite in startling languge the intensity of God's hatred of a lie. But there are hundreds of things, which do not amount to lies, but which are contrary to the beautiful perfection of simplicity. There is a speech and a silence, there are looks, manners, per missions, concealments, dubious smiles, pretended inad vertencies, unworthy conventions, and intentional dis tractions, which grieve the Holy Spirit, and make sad ravages of an interior soul, though they are far short of absolute falsehood. I think it is St. Augustine who says somewhere, that the devil so envied God the possession of His beloved Word, that he strove to mimic the Eternal Generation of the Son and to produce a word himself, which should be as far as was in his power consubstantial with himself, and that he straightway begot a lie; so that a lie is the devil's word, a daring, foul and loathsome image of the Ever-glorious and Only-begotten Son of God. This explains the intensity of God's hatred of a lie. And then the saint, or the old Italian commentator where I found it long ago, goes on to say that God made lying to be but a venial sin, in order to destroy its empire and degrade its power, and because of the facility of the sin and the pressure of the temptations, and in contempt for Satan's craft. This is an exposition of our Lord's name for the devil, the father of lies.

Now all this may be recommended to the notice even of spiritual persons. They offend God and do themselves a mischief by untruth, not in the shape of falsehood, but in the shape of want of simplicity. If you would be perfect, you must be truthful to a scruple. A hairV breadth of deceit must be to you as if it were a mile of positive untruth. Persons professing to aim at a life of union with God; and whose discretion fails of being su- 20* pernatural because it falls short of simplicity, are some times heard to quote what writers of moral theology teach, about the permissions of equivocations, amphibology, and mental reserve. I wish it could be rudely forced home upon them how shocking this is! Moral theology is not a system of ascetics, or a code of the counsels of perfection. The writers are engaged in showing either what is the very least of good dispositions on which we may rest a reluctant absolution, so as to attract sinners more power fully to God, and to advance the kingdom of Christ to the furthest limits of sheer possibility, and to carry the Precious Blood to the furthest limit to which it will go, or in explaining for the guidance of the priest how far an action may be imperfect, and what amount of unworthiness it may contain, without being an absolute breach of any of God's laws and so subjecting the offender to certain spiritual punishments and disabilities. They might as well model their kindliness to the poor, sick, and sorrowing around them on the manual of a Justice of the Peace as practise spirituality on a treatise of moral the ology. Forgive my repeating it. Get out of these little untruthfulnesses. When a man says in defence of him self, It is not a sin, he is making a public profession of abandoning the pursuit of perfection. Remember the maxim of a holy man j Le grand obstacle du progres spirituel est de ne s'abstenir que de ce qui paroit offense de Dieu, et de faire sans scrupule ce qui se peut faire sans crime.

Furthermore, while I am saying so much as this, I will venture to say somewhat more. Some of the best writers say that when equivocations and mental reserves, even where we seem in strictness to have a right to use them, are so against the custom and genius of a country that they would have the effect of direct untruth:>nd would weaken the foundations of public faith, we are not at liberty to use them. How far, it may be suggested, does not this render the whole teaching about them inapplicable to the country in which we are living, and to that virtue of truth which, like hope in Pandora's box, seems to many persons (truly or not) to have remained, when all else that was godly made wings to itself and flew away? It is worth a thought. However, even if we are, as other na tions find us in diplomacy, and as we Catholics find our fellow-countrymen in parliament and on juries, not alto gether as truthful as could be wished, it is plain that we pretend to be truthful, and honour with our praise the virtue we dishonour with our practice; and this is enough to make real scruple about it especially desirable. But of one thing I am quite clear, that many persons aiming at perfection, practising mental prayer, and performing bodily mortifications, come to a dead standstill because of their want of scruple about insincerities far short of un truth. Diplomacy of manner, way, and speech, circuitous routes for courtesy's sake, giving things the wrong names, and being silent when silence is really speech, these things are undoing men's sanctity and causing saints to break in the mould and frustrating beautiful purposes of grace every day; and so subtle is the delusion that when men feel that something is wrong in them but cannot depict it they wake up as it were to some rude, savage theories of misplaced and inopportune fraternal correction, or think to compensate for their cowardly double-dealing and double-tonguedness by the misplaced effusions of a vulgar candour. The devil will turn their attention in any direction rather than the right one. He dearly loves those little plausibilities and diplomacies. They are caverns where he finds congenial darkness, even when the rays of grace are beaming brightest on the soul, and where he lies hid till the splendours have faded into the usual grey twi-1 light of the soul that is but half for God.

All around us is hollow and insincere. The world is so in all ages: how eminently must it be so in a time of great luxury and high civilization! Simplicity is lacking in every department of life. As year glides away after year, it is the great truth which our experience is always teaching, and yet which is ever new to us, because the disappointment is ever raw, that even good people are less true, less frank, less honest, less manly, less noble than we took them to be. We go on trusting, only because it is so intensely miserable not to trust, that we would rather trust and be deceived, than not trust at all. It is the cry which age utters more and more piteously, as time goes on and the hair grows grey, that the beautifulness of truth is departed from among us. For it is a sort of consolation to believe that the time of youth was a golden age and that the world has worsened since. Alas! the gilding that we miss was never there: it was only sunshine that we projected from ourselves. It is hard to exaggerate the want of simplicity which is around us. No one is to his dearest friend what he really is. Let us take ourselves the man whom we most love and revere. How little does he know of us! How little do we let him know of us! How much we give him to understand which in reality is not true! We are acting a part before him. We are weighing our words, exaggerating our sympathies, bal. ancing our judgments, toning our minds to his. We would not for the world he should know what we really are. There are whole parts of our character curtained off from his observation. We see where his judgment of us is falsely favour able, but we have not the heart to set him right. We cannot trust the strength of his love in the face of our real vileness. Sometimes we hate ourselves for this very deceitfulness; it is so intolerable a thing to be loved for the very virtue, of whose opposite vice we are in fact the slaves. If even friendship is thus conventionally, nay, inevitably and blamelessly insincere, what must the less sacred relations of society be? Take away from social intercourse false praise of others, and half conscious and half unconscious praise of self, and what is left behind? A hateful refuse of un charitable judgments of others, and nothing more. la one word, wherever we look and on whatever point we bring our scrutiny to bear, all around us is lie, affectation, and pre tence. Forced sympathies, unreal excitements, imaginary interests, hypocritical enthusiasms, fashionable likings and dislikings, contagious imitations, and a whole significant world of conventional conversation, which has not the meaning the language grammatically only would convey — these are the component parts of daily well-mannered intercourse. And how long will even the domestic vir tues live and thrive in such a circumambient atmosphere? As to the name of God, a rude blow would hardly be a coarser surprise than it would be, amid the nicely-adjusted and smoothly-fitting insincerities of the system. What wonder that year after year this greedy, gnawing London, into whose den the young generations are thrown successively, should be eating the worth out of men and the very heart out of women?

But let us cast an eye at the action of simplicity in the spiritual life. Simplicity lives always in a composed con« sciousness of its own demerit and unworthiness. It is possessed with a constant sense of what the soul is in the sight of God. It knows that we are worth no more than we are worth in His sight; and while it never takes its eye off that view of self, so it does not in any way seek to hide it from others. In fact it desires to be this, and no more than this, in the eyes of others; and it is pained when it is more. Every neighbour is as it were one of God's eyes, multiplying His presence; and simplicity acts as if every one saw us, knew us, and judged us, as God does; and it has no wounded feeling that it is so. Thus, almost without direct effort, the sphere of self-love is so narrowed that it has comparatively little room foi action; although it never can be destroyed, nor its annoyance ever cease, except in the silence of the grave. The chains of human respect, which in the earlier stages of the spiritual life galled us so intolerably, now fall off from us, because simplicity has drawn us into the un clouded and unsetting light of the Eye of God. There is no longer any hypocrisy. There is no good opinion to lose, because we know we deserve none, and doubt if we possess it. We believe we are loved in spite of our faults, and respected because of the grace which is in us, and which is not our own and no praise to us. All diplomacy is gone; for there is no one to circumvent and nothing to appropriate. There is no odious laying ourselves out for edification; but an inevitable and scarcely conscious letting of our light shine before men, in such an obviously innocent and unintentional manner that it is on that account they glorify our Father who is in heaven. Who would dare to talk of God as laying Himself out tc dismay His own perfections in creation? Nay, He hides Himself; He has to be looked for and found out by all manner of deep thought, unexpected concealments, noise less disclosures, and delightful surprises. The secrecy of the saints is akin to their simplicity. But this leads me almost at once to our next grace. So that I shall say no more now than that simplicity clothes us from head to foot in Christianlike gracefulness. It gives an unworldly air to all we do, an astonishing persuasiveness to all we say, and our very silence and inaction have something so celestial about them that they exorcise evil and convert souls.

5. There is still another flower of the twofold devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Infancy, the grace of the hidden life. We have already had to deplore the want of a recognition of God's presence in the world; and we have seen that the very things, on which we plume ourselves, only render that recognition fainter and more infrequent. Literature, philosophy, science, politics, arid fashion, they are all striving to do without God, and are restless under the thought of Him, unless He will be to each of them the kind of God after the imaginings of their own hearts. Now the publicity of modern times has a great deal to do with this. The more we live before the world the less we live before God. The more the world's judgment is to us, the less is God's. The glare of the world's eye is angry and jealous, and it blinds us to the soft, pervasive, pleading look of the Eye of God. There is no more privacy now. We live in the streets and squares, as the old Athenians did, not for the laudable reason they had, that their homes were simple and unluxurious, and their sky serene and beautiful, but because we are passionately enamoured of notoriety. All society seems to be a collection of self-erected bars, be fore which anybody and everybody is being called daily, for every sort of action, even for the details and scandals of domestic life. All mankind have agreed to confer jurisdiction upon themselves and upon each other to sit in judgment on their peers, and to open tribunals the very opposite of Christian confessionals. They do not see how public opinion can be kept pure, and public morals up to the mark of comfortable, and secure enjoyment of property and character without them. Associa tions, whether of a political, literary, or scientific character, or for mutual benefit and periodical banqueting, are de velopments of the same mania for publicity. Clubs are a social expression of it. The immense number of per sons among whom the responsibility of government is infinitesimally shared, leads to the same result; and the increased facilities of rapid communication play into its hands; and the great tyrannical prophet of it all is the press, and the irresponsible despotic sway of anonymous journalism.

This great publicity is infectious, and gives rise to little publicities, and to a spirit of publicity; and here it is that the spiritual life touches upon it, and suffers from it. In spirituality talking is always a loss of power. It is like steam. It is mighty when it is imprisoned, a mere Tapour when it is set free. The " secret of the king" is dishonoured when publicity is given to it, and it is no longer an element of earnestness, a source of fortitude within the soul. Better is it to follow the poet's advice:

• Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control

That o'er thee swell and throng; They will condense within thy soul,

And change to purpose strong. But he, who lets his feelings run

In soft luxurious flow, Shrinks when hard service must be done,

And faints at every woe. Faith's meanest deed more favour bears,

Where hearts and wills are weighed, Than brightest transports, choicest prayers,

Which bloom their hour and fade."

fTw it is that so few people have a sufficiently strong flpiiual constitution to be able to indulge unharmed in conversation about their interior life and their mystical experience. It almost always enervates them, and leads to distracted prayers, misty examinations of conscience, and broken resolutions.

So also is it in good works. Many fine plans have been spoiled prematurely by making them public. Not only because it was indiscreet, and has raised obstacles which would otherwise have been taken quietly and disarmed unawares.² But also because we get tired of a thing which we talk much about. Our firmness goes off in talk. Our courage too is disheartened because of the chilling and adverse criticism to which we have exposed ourselves. And thus partly because the charm of novelty is passed away, and partly because we shrink under criticism, and partly because we have forfeited God's special blessing by parading our good intention in the sunshine of the world's praise, we abandon our purpose, leaving it only just begun, or half done, or not begun at all, which is really the best fortune of all, because it is the least scandal. Our power to persevere went with our divulging the secret. In like manner charity is unqueened by all this publicity. Everything that is lovely and heavenly about it is marred and disfigured, the bloom gone from it, the odour passed off, because its sanctuary has been invaded. Neither is this the worst evil. Methods of sin and occasions of sin are multiplied by our knowing so much of each other, and by seeking so much to make ourselves known. The tongue is a foun tain that requires a huge water-power to feed it, and this power publicity seems abundantly to furnish; so that with that class of sins, a desperate, hungry, multitudinous, insatiate brood, the facilities are almost converted into necessities. But we not only want to give ourselves publicity, but to know the publicity of others. Hence our minds are filled with such a host of little details, scandals, gossips, rumours, hints, surmises, interpreta tions, and judgments, that we are hardly able to practise the presence of God at all; and as to our prayers, dis tractions invade them with such irresistible regularity, that we can foresee and calculate the time when it will be no prayer at all, but all distraction; just as those loose sterile dunes of sand advance ruthlessly upon poor sea side villages, and will not grow a blade of grass, nor a willow sprout, whose roots might give some security by giving some consistence. What comes of this, but want of greatness? It is all so mean, so very mean. For the love of publicity, interpreted spiritually, comes to this.

The soul is S3 wearied of elevating itself to God, so tired of breathing the thin, pure air of His presence, that it turns faint and leans upon the world, and makes the world its judge, its rcmunerator, its God; and as the world lives on speed, feeds like a swallow as it flies, and cares for no harvest but swift results and the grandeurs of a night, everything becomes shallow about us, tall without girth, inconsistent, and insecure: everything must be run up, there is no time to grow. Novelties are wanted, and successes, and wonders, and sudden starts, and bold moves, and simultaneous, comprehensive achievements. And all these things are the contradic tories of the spiritual life

It is a bad thing to be in the world's glare, and a hard thing to get out of it; and publicity, like the sun, takes the colour out of our dyes, but it cannot like the sun. paint the flowers or mature the fruit. Still there are ways and means for such as will try them, and which have a certain aptitude to win a blessing upon them. I will venture upon five little rules. 1. Always keep some one thing concerning yourself hidden, some one good action, or some one grace, 01 some one virtuous quality which you think others would be likely to esteem. This one secret will be as good as a fortress to you. 2. Never communicate to others matters of spiritual direction, neither what you have mentioned to your spiritual guide, nor the advice which he has given you. By mentioning the first you lose true knowledge of yourself, for you exaggerate what you reveal, and by the second you lose the power of following the advice given. The extra mischief you do is a secondary consideration, though it is by no means small. 3. Leave some one branch of know ledge an unknown country to you. It must be at once some department of knowledge which is not needful for the proper discharge of your duties, and at the same time is an object of curiosity and desire to you. You will not find a firmer footing in the soul, when you come to wrestle, than in this voluntary and self-denying ignorance. 4. Never keep a spiritual journal, a record of pious thoughts, or any vestige of a religious auto biography. I do not mean to say that saints have not done so. But you must not do it. You will live in a land of dreams and conceits if you do, and, though perhaps you do not believe it now, you will actually come at last to do and to say follies, in order to write them down afterwards. If you would know how the infatuation of keeping a journal is entangled with every root and fibre of self-love, throw your journal into the fire, and you will find out. Forget yourself, and what you have gone through. God remembers. Surely that is enough. If your visions and your extasies and your sweet thoughts of God are a boon the world could hardly do without, God will send you a spiritual director to command you under holy obedience to write them down. Wait till He does so. 5. Never remove a misunderstanding which has arisen about you, until you have quietly looked at it three separate times, in honour of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and are satisfied that it is really for God's glory that you should do so. In most cases God gets more glory out of the misunderstanding, than out of the removal of it. But the removal of it is always for our own glory. And these two thoughts put together should make us slow, cautious, and reluctant to come out again into the sunshine of men's good opinion, when we have been so fortunate as to forfeit it without our fault.

These are at once the flowers and fruits of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Infancy: joy, adoration, gratitude, simplicity, and the grace of the hid den life. "\Vbat more natural than that joy should come of the Sacred Infancy? The angels sang; it was good tidings of great gladness. They are, as the Church calls them, the joyful mysteries of the Rosary. And what is the special grace of the Blessed Sacrament but spiritual sweetness and eucharistic joy? In the Sacred Infancy we are called upon to adore at every turn. If Jesus sleeps, or smiles, or weeps, or wakes, if He be in the manger, or on Mary's lap, or in Joseph's arms, there is God always and in every mystery, the living God, to be worshipped and adored in all His numerous hiding places. And the Blessed Sacrament is the adorable God Himself beneath the veils. The lamp burns, the bell rings, the incense smokes, the knee bends, the head bows, the tongue is hushed. All these are signs and symbols; for the devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is the adoration of the Uncreated Majesty. Adoration is of the essence of the devotion, not merely of its integrity. Every circumstance of the Sacred Infancy is in itself a distinct motive of gratitude. From the nature of the case it must be so. It is one of the first feelings which the Incarnation produces; and at our first view of Jesus it is naturally poured forth. There can be no need to show the connection between gratitude and the Blessed Sacrament; for is not the Eucharist itself by its very name rightfully proclaimed the Sacrament of Thanksgiving? Simplicity is the presiding unity of the Sacred Infancy. If to be holy we are to Ix*- 21* Q come as little children, to be saints we must be as the little Child of Bethlehem. And simplicity is equally the great law of the Blessed Sacrament. It is not something consecrated by the virtue of God, it is God Himself. It is not the influence, the effect, the grace of Jesus: it is Jesus Himself, the personal fount of grace: and therefore it confers grace in a different manner, or at least by a different title from the other sacraments. Indeed, if the casualty of grace in the sacraments be moral and not physical, as is by some considered more probable, then is it probable³ that not the Body of our Lord only, but the species also, confer grace, a doctrine which adds to the simplicity of its operation, and is very wonderful beside. To speak of Bethlehem and Nazareth, of the Host and the Tabernacle, what is it but to speak of the hidden life? Before our Lord came, the world knew nothing of it. It is one of the new ideas which the Incarnation has deposed in the bosom of humanity. It is one of the salient characteristics of the final revelation of God to man. It is a doctrine, a practice, a devotion, which is Catholic all over. It seems to pass away with orthodoxy, as if it were of that very quintessence of the Gospel, which escapes and is breathed away where the unity of the Church has been broken by ever so slight a rent.

Such is the comparison between the devotions to the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Infancy, suggested by the practice of the Church, and disclosed by our Lord Himself in His secret communications with His saints. The devotions are almost identical in spirit. Their mys teries are so remarkably similar as to suggest that the one was a type and adumbration of the other, if anything s& real can be called a shadow. The devotional phenomena of the Blessed Sacrament are quite as beautiful as those of the Sacred Infancy, and tend towards the same results in the spiritual life. But here a great and double contrast arises between the two. The devotion to the Sacred Infancy is strictly commemorative. It is love and worship dwelling on the past. The mysteries of Bethlehem and Nazareth were once living and in action. Now they live in faith only. The world saw them, heard them^ touched them, felt them. Now they are poetry, history, doctrine, and devotion. Thus our worship as it were goes through them and seeks Jesus beyond them, and rests in Him far away. But devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is the worship of the living presence of Jesus. It im plies an act daily renewed, a mystery in constant and real action, and here with us and amongst us, before our own eyes and by our own voices. Its mysteries are alive and present and in vivid operation. Its operations are contemporary with our own. It is the true reality of our dear Lord's Sacred Humanity, not a mere memorial cf some beautiful thing which He did above a thousand years ago. This of course gives a depth and solemnity, an earnestness and a truth, to this devotion, with which none other can compare. Then, secondly, if we put out of view the merely memorial character of devotion to th<» Sacred Infancy, and suppose it to be in the course of being enacted really and truly before our eyes, we may contrast in themselves the mysteries of Bethlehem with the mys teries of the Altar; and we may venture with all reverence to say, that the wisdom and the power and the condescension of God have outdone upon the Altar what they did at Bethlehem. The operations are even yet more subtle and more wonderful, more hidden and more heavenly. Nay, the fact that such another depth of goodness, such a new vista of miraculous compassions, losing themselves in infinity and darkness, should be disclosed, after the stupendous abyss of the Incarnation had opened up and given forth k.s creations of beauty, its portents of power, its revelations of love, its manifold sacramental forms of divine grace, surely this in itself was a new wonder, as the Incarnation itself was a wonder upon creation. It is not with God as with His people. The glory of the second temple was greater than the glory of the first, and the glory of the third united and excelled the glories of the other two.

Let us, then, betake ourselves with new fervour to this queen of sacraments, and renew our faith that we may become like the Child of Bethlehem. As De Lugo says, it may be piously believed, though it cannot be proved, that, equal dispositions being supposed, the Eucharist, simply as a sacrament and in its sacramental action, may confer upon us such grace in quantity and quality as is unknown to the other sacraments.⁴ It is a pious beliif, though the truth can be known to God only. But the chief thing is that our Lord is there, and therein consists the indubitable pre-eminence of this glorious Sacrament. Let us not be afraid of the venturesome questions of deep theology. Remember, the leader of them, St. Thomas, is a saint, of whom our Lord Himself said that he had written well of Him. The Church is by our side. No questions are idle. Scholastic wisdom is never wholly subtle. Holiness and fear and unworldliness and love will all grow in our hearts while we lift the veil and gaze, as far as He lets us, through the medium of pure and saintly minds, on this mysterious operation in the Venerable Eucharist.

Blessed are they who through the singleness of a pure intention, through the keenness of their faith, and through the ardour of their love, even on earth copy the Eternal One, work with Him, work for Him, work in Him, follow His fashions and bide His time. One day by a stretch of compassion we shall lie in the Bosom of the Eternal, and gaze upon the sweet Vision of Him ] and far beneath that harbour of our peace there will be no more the cities of earth, ringing with the strong voice of labour. The world will have passed away; and as when some mighty tree falls in a forest, there is a rustling of the tossing leaves and then a thundering crash, and a little silence, and thf green boughs meet and wave again over the place of the giant that has fallen, and the fearless song of some little bird fills the summer air — so will the world have sped away, and the ceaseless songs of seraphs will be heard, clear and soft and beautiful, as though there had never been a fallen world, clear and soft and beautiful as on creation's dawn, and in the selfsame strains, most wonderful, most sweet, Sanctus! Sanctus I Sanctus! Dominus Deus Sabaoth

Footnotes

1. This is the Thomist view, and is put forward by the angelical doctor as diminishing the number of miracles in Transubstantiation. There are very strong arguments, however, against the other acci dents being supported on the commensurable quantity, and I have not been able to convince myself of the truth of the Thomist view. ↩

2. Une bonne oeuvre, divulguee avant le temps, est i moitU) de"truite. S. Vincent de Paul. Les affaires de Dieu so conservent dans le secret de son Esprit: les publier au monde, c'est les exposer an diable, qui peut les contrarier aise"ment, par ceux qui se laissent tonduire a sa malignite". Pert de Condren. ↩

3. De Lugo, de Euch. i. ii. 22-23 ↩

4. De Lugo, i. i. xi. ↩