Lecture I. St. Philip a Portrait of Jesus

A year has gone round, my dear Brethren, since St Philip first began to teach, to preach, to give spiritual graces, and to make his home here. You have connected yourselves with him; you have let yourselves be drawn within the sphere of his influence; you have gladly drunk of his peculiar spirit; you are conscious to yourselves of many secret favours which you have received through him; in a word, you have of your own accord made yourselves his children, and St Philip has lovingly adopted you. In asking you then to set aside these three days as a solemn preparation for his feast, I am only asking what you will be forward to grant; and in speaking to you about St Philip, I may speak to you, not as strangers, but as children of our dear and holy Patriarch, who will not harshly criticise what may seem the affectionate exaggerations of an Oratorian. I cannot of course say to you in three Lectures all I think or feel about St. Philip; like other Saints who have left the impress of their character upon the Church of God, he may be looked at

B from many points of view. I wish, if he will please to help me, to put one view of him before you in this Triduo, so that you may be able to have a true idea of St Philip, * and his peculiar spirit and genius, and therefore of the work which he comes to do in England at this present day.

The fact with which we start is this: — Here in a Protestant country, the genius of whose nationality may be said to be most eminently Protestant, a number of men, thoroughly English in education, ways, habits, feelings, and tone of thought, some in one place, some in another, some for one reason, some for another, have been mercifully drawn by the power of grace to abjure their false religion and save their souls in the Church of God. The Church receives them, and vouchsafes to use whatever they may have of energy or usefulness for her own purposes. In remarkable ways (which it would be out of place to detail here), not only without forethought, but quite contrary to it, and without being agreed among themselves, a Roman Saint, but little known in England, and with a very special genius of his own, attracts them to himself. They are drawn almost without knowing it, some abroad, others at home, some earlier, others later, some attracted by one feature of the Saint, others by another, and some with little or no distinct perception of what it was which was so palpably alluring them. The Vicar of Christ, the holy Father at Rome, gives not a bare but a cordial approval to their deed. They become the children of St. Philip, embrace his Institute, and place themselves beneath the yoke of his rule. Experience shews them it was no blind leading which guided them to the Apostle of Rome; they find his Institute as if it had been expressly made for them and their peculiar circumstances; it fulfils more than words can tell every desire of their hearts, they find in it all they need, and more than they expected; and what seems stranger still, its ideas, sympathies, tastes, instincts, yearnings, seem to be a simple intellectual expression of their own. When you consider the varieties of character and disposition, of education, taste, circumstances and wants, of a score of men, you will admit that there is something remarkable in this fact

Furthermore, St Philip's Institute has a characteristic which distinguishes it from all other Orders and Congregations, so far as I know. Take, for instance, the Society of Jesus, which was founded about the same time as the Oratory, and whose members have ever been in all lands the kindest and most generous friends of St Philip's children. St Ignatius, St Francis Xavier, St Francis Borgia, St Aloysius, Bellarmine — these are all so many different types of sanctity on which their spiritual descendants may form themselves, according to their circumstances or leanings. No one ever supposes that every Jesuit Father is to aim at reproducing in himself a miniature portrait of St Ignatius; it is to their Rule, to iheir Constitutions, to their system, to their traditions, that they have to look; the whole breadth of Christian activity and heroism is theirs; the missions of heathen lands, the schools of little children, the chairs of great universities, the preaching of retreats, the retirement of study, the care of hospitals and asylums, the confessionals in town and country, the scientific observatory, the formation of seminaries, the spiritual paradise of the noviciate, the religious silence of the professed house — all these things are opened to them; obedience puts each one upon his line; and to a Jesuit there is no line for which his own wonderful Society cannot furnish him with a patron Saint from its own canonized or beatified members. The same may be said, with the remarkable exception of the different families of the Franciscans, of all other religious Orders and Congregations. But it is very different in the Oratory: there every one has but one work to do — rigidly, exclusively one — to imitate St. Philip, to copy him, naturally and without affectation, in all his ways, to reproduce in himself a more or less imperfect likeness of his father. We have to look rather to an individual example than a system, more to St. Philip's manners and sayings than to a rule. Indeed he left no rule; the brief code of laws by which, under apostolical authority, the Oratory is now governed, was drawn up by his favourite disciple, F. Pietro Consolini, after the Saint's death, and is simply an application in detail of St PhiKp's spirit to the regulations of community life, and more particularly of that especial form of community life which it was the holy Father's will should be lived by his children in the Congregation. It remains true that the prominent object of the Oratorian is to become an affectionately servile copy of St Philip, and that his whole spiritual life is to lead that way. That inexhaustible and exciting variety, that world of work, into which the energy of a Jesuit is turned loose, is not allowed to the Oratorian. St. Philip is close at hand, and is watching him jealously; he is constantly repeating, almost to weariness, cautions against variety of work, against adding to the three objects of the Institute, prayer, preaching, sacraments. He is ever inspiring the Superiors of his houses to mortify the energies and zeal of their subjects, to nip in the bud promising schemes of usefulness, and to wither with unsympathetic coldness or startling severity all influence or success which seem to lie beyond the narrow sphere of the modest Insitute. It would not be easy to conceive a completer or more jealously exacted sacrifice than that which the Institute of the Oratory demands of those who are postulants for it: it simply requires that the whole man should be assimilated to itself. Nay, it is not only of the blessed Sebastian ValfrS that it was true, that the features of St Philip, the look of his eyes, the shape of his mouth, the lines of his face, passed into the countenances of his children; and does not all this shew most clearly that the end of the Institute was to copy an individual pattern which God had given to His Church, and in various climes and distant ages to reproduce mimic representations of St Philip, filled according to their capacity with his spirit and his life? Look into the life of St Ignatius, and see how different is the relative position of that blessed Founder, and his heaven-sent Rule, from what it is in the Oratory. The Franciscans alone resemble the Oratory in this respect; and every one knows the secret sympathy and mutual understanding there has ever been between the children of St Francis and St Philip.

Now this characteristic of St Philip's Institute, that it is a perpetual reproduction of an individual pattern, makes it all the more remarkable that a various body of converts and strangers in the Church should find themselves first of all so irresistibly drawn to St Philip, and then so astomshingly satisfied with what they found in him and in his Institute. It shews plainly that St Philip represents something, is a type of something, embodies something; that he represented more than himself, and did not live for himself; that there was an Idea in him which God meant the Church to take up and fulfil; and lastly, that what St Philip represented, whatever it might be, was a whole, a thoroughly finished and harmonious whole, in keeping with itself in all its parts and bearings, equipped with armour of its own, and with the same instincts circulating through it, so that it could know itself and understand its work, and others could recognise it, understand it, and even predict its future conduct, when they looked carefully upon it It must have been all this, or else how could it have drawn to itself in so strange a manner men of opposite tastes, of different talents, and of varying dispositions? But our proof of this does not rest precariously on one instance; though I think it will be admitted that the instance is a remarkable one, and well suited for a test

Persons external to the Oratory often find great difficulties in the peculiarities of the Institute. They say, " How can you all have the same spirit, when you are not a religious order? Your houses are distinct; you have no general noviciate; no recognised system of trainjfrig, modelled on one uniform pattern or mother-house; no single fountain of unbroken tradition; Oratories start up here and there, like springs through the surface of the earth; what can you be but a collection of different Institutes, with the unreal and fallacious unity of a single designation?" And yet, when they look abroad, to their astonishment they find everywhere that Oratorians are as like each other as the religious of any order that can be named, When we look at the portraits of the great Jesuit Theologians and spiritual writers in the folio editions of their works, we cannot help smiling at the family likeness of the faces; so it is with pictures of Oratorians: look even at the severe face of our dear Baronius; no one would dream of taking him for a

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Jesuit In Italy or Spain, Poland, or Mexico, or Ceylon, or the newly founded nursery of St Philip in England, one Oratorian is just like another; they have all the same ways, manners, style, spirit, sympathies, instinct, genius. The very observation has been made by people external to the Institute. They have borne witness to the fact, and at the same time have made no secret of their surprise. Does not this then shew how true it is that St Philip represents some one consistent idea, that he takes up into himself and gives forth from himself a certain spirit and temper, which is from God, because the Church has blessed it and fostered it, and which has a certain definite work to do for God in the Church? The facts refuse to be explained in any other way.

This then is what we start with. St Philip represents an idea; the love of that idea, conscious or unconscious, is the vocation of his children, the realization of it their work; the mode whereby they realize it is the close imitation of the Saint himself, within the limits of a form of life of peculiar observances and unvowed obedience, framed by the mighty Mother of God, and by her revealed to St. Philip. So that an Oratorian, obediently discharging the tasks of his Institute, is living a life (he has no less a guarantee than St Philip's own word for this sustaining faith) which it was the sweet will of the Most Holy and Exalted Mother of God should be lived in the Church of her Son during these Modern Times.

Now you see, my dear Brethren, how I have at last brought you to the subject of our Triduo — the Spirit and Genius of St Philip. What is the idea which he represents? How must we look at him to get a clear notion of his place in the Church of God? Let us begin then to speak of him; and let us ask his leave and Benedicite at our beginning. We who are children of St Philip cannot speak of him as of a Saint far away in Heaven; such a view of him is not natural to our minds. To say the truth, we dare not so speak of him. In his own house he teaches us otherwise; he lets us know for certain, in ways of his own, that he is amongst us. We are inmates of his house; we live upon his sayings; our eyes are never off his ways; and so at last, as Baronius says he felt when the Saint was gone, we too feel that he is still among us, ready to correct and chasten us when we turn aside from his modest way, loving us very tenderly, yet never telling us so, but seeming as though he only just contrived to bear with us in his house and no more. We almost expect to meet him in the passages, or to hear his voice in our solitude or recreations; we cannot look at his picture without emotion, and sometimes its gaze almost startles us, as if it had life in it; you would think it quite childish if I was to tell you how keen this feeling is, and in what little things he makes us obedient to some chance word of his, dropped centuries ago, at random, as it seemed, in the streets of Rome, or amid the pleasant vineyards, in the populous Banchi, or by the church door of St Girolamo over against the English College, or on Mont' Onofrio, and recorded in his life. Will you let me say it? I can fancy the disciples of our Blessed Lord feeling thus, when He had withdrawn His visible presence from them and had ascended into Heaven. So, I repeat, let us ask the Father's leave and Benedicite at our beginning.

As the Christian life is simply a supernatural continuation of the life of Christ, it is not to be wondered at that they who are accustomed to the study of the Lives of the Saints should discover that each Saint represents in a special way some portion of the sweet mystery of the

Incarnation. The Catholic Saints carry on, after the Incarnation, what the typical characters of the Old Testament did for our Lord before His coming. Some of His gifts and graces shone forth in each, His own work in them, so that all put together, if we subtract time and place, form in their whole a bright shadow of Him, who was to come, and for whose coming they were looking; and the Catholic Saints now in like manner catch the reflection of the Ascended Lord from on high, just as the mountain tops glow with roseate hues from the sun they still behold, though he is long since set to those who dwell upon the level plain. Now, when we look at St Philip, it seems difficult at first sight to say what portion of our Blessed Lord's glory and beauty grace causes him to represent; but I suppose the more attentively we study his life, the more true it will seem to us to say — Surely, among all the Saints, Philip is one of the most eminently supernatural! Supernatural is just the very word that expresses him; it is not that he is supernatural in any one respect more than in another; but that the whole man, and the life of him, is unvaryingly supernatural The Congregation of Rites says of him, that none was ever like him for the gift of prophecy. St. Richard of Chichester, our English thaumaturgus, St. Francis of Paula, and St Philip's devotee, St. Joseph of Cupertino, may have wrought numerically as many miracles as he; yet none seems to have made so little effort, or been so much at his ease about it, going up and down the streets of Rome a fountain of hourly energizing miraculous powers. Look at the prudence of St Alphonso, that blessed Saint, who was trained in St Philip's Oratorium Parvum at Naples, what a much more earthly-looking thing it is than St Philip's. Many Saints have had the gift of seeing things absent, and reading the secrets of men's hearts; but with St Philip it seems to have been his habitual normal state; it appeared as if he never had to get information like other people; he is quite awful in this respect St Ignatius had wonderful ecstasies at Mass, and was so exhausted by them, that he sometimes could only say Mass every other day; St Philip's ecstasies were longer and still more wonderful, yet he seemed annealed to bear the fires as though he were already of another world, and had learned the secret which the Prophet inquired after, how to dwell with the everlasting burnings of the Most Holy Trinity. Even the Blessed Lawrence of Brindisi cannot compare with him in this respect He not only raised the dead, but, when he had raised them, he gave them their choice of living or of dying again; and in one instance he commanded a person to die, and the command was instantly obeyed; just — what can I say short of this? — as if he was God, and the issues of life and death were in Philip's hands. It is not then in this or that particular grace or gift, but altogether, that our Holy Father may justly be named Philip the Supernatural It expresses him more exactly than any other name can do. I wish I had time to draw it out more at length for you.

It is then quite in accordance with this supernaturalness of St. Philip, that, when we come to inquire what portion of the mystery of the Incarnation it is, which by the varied working of grace is specially represented in St. Philip, we are obliged to acknowledge it to have been, what cannot indeed be reiterated, for it is no less than a consequence of the Hypostatic Union, but what was astonishingly shadowed forth and reflected in St Philip — that double state of the Incarnate Word, who was at the same moment a Viator and a Comprehensor, at once a journeyer on earth, yet one who had arrived at His journey's end in Heaven already. St. Philip seemed to have two lives, to live in two worlds. His five hours' Mass was all ecstasy; he was ever passing into ecstasy at other times; he conversed on familiar terms with Jesus and Mary; people actually heard him talking out loud with the Mother of God a whole night through: he saw spirits; his life was physically a miracle, because of his side rent and riven by that dilated heart where the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity vouchsafed to dwell in some unusual way. Of the twenty-four hours of St. Philip's day well nigh as much was spent in seeing and hearing, and tasting and touching, and smelling the things and the fragrance of Heaven, as in seeing and hearing, and tasting and touching, and smelling the things of earth. I do not know any other Saint of whom this can be said. To put every thing else aside, only consider for a moment that sweet wonder which once was upon earth — St Philip's Mass! I see before me now the little room where it was wont to be; how little did I, a Protestant stranger in that room years ago, dream I should ever be of the Saint's family, or that the Oratorian Father who shewed it me should in a few years be appointed by the Pope the novice-master of the English Oratorians! I remember how, when he kissed the glass of the case in which St. Philip's little bed is kept as a relic, he apologized to me as a Protestant, lest I should be scandalized, and told me with a smile how tenderly St. Philip's children loved their Father. I was not scandalized with his relic-worship then, but I can understand better now what he said about the love, the child-like love wherewith St. Philip inspired his sons. If any one had told me then that in seven short years I should wear the same habit, and the same white collar in the streets of

London, and be preaching a triduo in honour of Rome's apostle, I should have wondered how any one could dream so wild a dream. But the wise man said long ago, " The steps of man are guided by the Lord, but who is the man that can understand his own way?" Yes! I see before me the little room, it looks across the Tyber, upon whose barred and bolted door the server used, on retiring for hours, to leave the strange notice — " Silence! the Father is saying Mass! " When the superaltare faded away and the Crucifix seemed to lose itself in light, and the walls of the room to melt from before him, and Paradise, its peace, its beauty, its ravishing order, broke upon his sight, who can tell what things he saw in God, or how much of the future, his own future, his children's future, might then be made plain to him? Who can say that we ourselves, his English children, his last and least, born out of time, and unworthy of his name, did not pass before his spirit, and that our doings did not mingle with those overpowering thoughts which made his heart leap up, and the predella of the altar tremble beneath his feet? During those long hours, in that dim upstairs chapel, with its windows barred, how wonderfully and intimately earth met heaven, and heaven earth! Who can calculate the amount of work that was done for the Church at that time, nay, or the graces that were perhaps impetrated for our very selves, while the common daylight struggled through the chinks in the shutters, and fell upon the Lamb of God lying still upon the corporal, patiently abiding till His servant had had time to let the flames of his excessive love escape in tears and sighs which might be an angel's envy!

Thus then, so far as a mere creature could do so, St Philip did in a very remarkable way image that double life of Viator and Comprehensor which in its reality could belong alone to the theandricai existence of the Incarnate Word. But.here you will object, and very justly, that this was not a representation of any gift or grace or special beauty of our most dear Lord, but rather an awful similitude which He vouchsafed to permit between Himself and one of His servants; and that it is therefore no answer whatever to the inquiry — what part of our Lord's character St. Philip, as a Saint, especially represents; for though the double state of our Blessed Lord was most intimately a portion of the mystery of the Incarnation, flowing immediately out of the Hypostatic Union, it is not of things of this sort that we venture to speak when we talk of the reflections of our Saviour's light and grace in His Saints. This is most true, and brings us a step nearer to the idea of St Philip. There is no one grace more than another pre-eminent in him; there is no miraculous gift in which he so specially shone forth as thereby to eclipse his greatness in other ways; there is no one of the attractive characteristics of Jesus which was in Philip disproportioned to the others. In his measure and degree there is a supernatural harmony and equality in his graces, which again casts our thoughts, whether we will or not, upon Him who deigned to be the pattern of all ugliness, and who was Himself the Eternal and the Holy One. When men looked back upon St. Francis of Assisi, who, born at the close of the twelfth century, was the light of the thirteenth, they could not see his special grace; they could not name the one virtue whereby St. Francis might be known and called; it was a galaxy of such equal lustre that distinction and separation were impossible. Then, when they beheld how, by the dispositions of Divine Providence, even the external life of the Patriarch of Assisi was visibly conformed to that of Jesus, c they adored the goodness of God who had given, not so much a pattern of one heroic virtue, not so much a Saint, as a Christ-like seraph to the Church; and Francis grew before their eyes no longer as the son of Pietro and Picca Bernardone, but as Jesus upon earth once more. This is the very idea of St Francis in the Church; that he is a full-length portrait of our Lord upon earth. Men have gone so far as to write learned books to prove that it was so. They would have said, if they could, that his enamoured passion for poverty was his distinguishing grace; but they saw it was not poverty in any narrow or special sense with which he was in love, but that universal poverty, outward and inward, involuntary, voluntary, and self-sought, which was the substratum of the blessed life of Jesus upon earth; just as when we try to make St Philip's love of humiliations his particular grace, we remember that it is but another name for St Francis's poverty, that celestial temper, instinct and affection which was the underlying of all the human graces and beauty of the Incarnate Word. St Philip and St Francis have a specialty of their own. They stand together: we cannot help thinking of them together: we name them in one breath. We love one if we love the other. We wonder at them as such marvellously faithful copies of Jesus; and we understand the unbroken love and quick sympathy of well-nigh three hundred years which have existed between the Oratorians and Franciscans.

This then seems to be the true idea of St Philip. At almost all periods of the history of the Church God is pleased to raise up for us martyrs, doctors, confessors, virgins, as we need them: they come to die for a truth which needs martyrdom to illustrate it, as St John Nepomucene, or they come to found new religious orders, as St Dominic, or to revive the life of old orders, as St Theresa, or to meet the emergencies of a crisis, as St Ignatius, or to animate by practice new forms and modes, as St Charles Borromeo did for the Council of Trent, or to protest against abuses, as St Bernard, or to gain a battle by losing it, as St Gregory VIL, or to teach, as St Thomas Aquinas, or to reform the clergy, as St Alfonso, or to break in pieces secular tyranny, as St Thomas of Canterbury, or to propagate the faith, as St Francis Xavier, or to catechise children, as St Joseph Calasanctius, or to be the father of the fatherless, as St Jerome Emilian, or to minister to the sick, as St Camillus of Lellis, or to redeem captives, as St John Hatha, or to christianize a luxurious capital, as St Vincent of Paul, or to pray upon the mountain-tops, as the seven Blessed Founders of the Servites, or to sit upon the throne of St Peter, as St Pius V. and the Yen. Innocent XI. Each comes with his work to do, or with his pain to suffer, or with his lesson to teach. They come when they are wanted; they are unknown, or mistaken, while they are alive; they are known, and understood, and worshipped, when they are dead. They do not come by chance. Grace knows no capriciousness, though it so often looks as if it did. God sends them, and they fit their times. Perhaps, if we had spiritual discernment to find it out, there may be something of a general law in the successive and various appearances of Saints along the line of the Church's History. Certainly Saints seem to reproduce their like in a very remarkable way, and as it were by law, under the control of special devotions. The crowd of Beatified Franciscan Lay-brothers is a remarkable instance of this. As God has given these Saints with their special work or distinct lesson to His Church from time to time, each reflecting some gift or grace which was in Him who is the Source of grace; so has He twice vouchsafed to give to His Church full-length portraits of Jesus, Saints who should seem to represent Him entire, so far as their lowness would permit As, in the Middle Ages, St Francis was recognised as the shadow of Jesus upon earth, so for Modern Times we may venture to say the same of St Philip. Twice, I say, God has mercifully vouchsafed to do this: from 1182 to 1226, for five and forty years St. Francis was given to the Church; and during the whole course of the sixteenth century, except its first fifteen and its last five years, St. Philip was granted to Christendom, and was the Apostle of its capital, a new successor of St Peter and St Paul by a supernatural and extraordinary succession. As I am speaking to Catholics, I need not fear lest I should seem irreverent in doing for St Philip what so many generations of our Catholic ancestors have done for St. Francis — in venturing to compare him with our Blessed Lord. Of course we do not for one moment forget that He is God and they are His creatures; that what they have and are allowed to be is all of Him; but I am sure that nothing short of this comparison will enable us to understand St Philip aright, just as our forefathers felt that nothing short of this was the true expression of St Francis. So it is that they stand apart in a circle separate from other Saints; and this is their differentia. I repeat then that the true idea of St. Philip is, that God gave him to the Church as a full portrait of Jesus, to be a singular significant type for Modern Times, just as St. Francis was a singularly significant type for the Middle Ages. Now it is not any mere external picturesque likeness to Our Blessed Lord's earthly life and ministry that I am referring to; but to a similitude of a much deeper kind. I will illustrate what I mean by an example. Shortly after the middle of the fourteenth century, the city of Siena, in Tuscany, even yet a strange mediaeval-looking place, seen far and wide with its uneven cluster of top-heavy towers, sent forth into Italy, by a providential banishment, a little band of exiles, drawn in great measure from the middle classes. They were headed by the Blessed John Colombini. All they wanted was to be like Jesus; they were called Gesuati, from His Name. The Blessed John went over hill and dale with his followers; they preached in the fields and in the streets; their sermons, as we read them in the pure old Italian at this day, were foil of the unearthly sweetness and savoury unction of the discourses of our Lord. When they came to a town they cried out, " Viva Gesit!" and when the startled inhabitants came out to look at these strange heralds, they preached repentance and the sweetness of Jesus. They were the poorest of earth's poor, yet kinder to the poor than the rich or the noble were. When driven out of one city they betook them to another. Siena was their Nazareth, and Arezzo their Capharnaum; and they had their Bethany, and their Bethphage, and their Bethsaida and the rest, in Lucca and in Pisa, in Pistoja and in Florence, in Corneto and in Viterbo. And so they wandered on: their only passion was to be like Jesus. They were taken up as heretics; but the Cardinal of Marseilles and the Inquisitor acquitted them of the charge. Then Pope Urban favoured them, and gave them a habit, and made them a religious Order, and they called themselves the " Poor Little Ones of Jesus." The blue waves of the lake of Bolsena, with its heavenly island, and the fairy-land round about — these were to them the Lake of Tiberias,, with its rhododendron-covered shores. And they were blessed by God, because of their simplicity, and He gave a marvellous power to their interior doctrine; and barons and peasants, nay, churchmen and prelates too, were pricked to the heart, and put on the yoke of Christ, and paid obedience to the Blessed John and his rough Apostles. At last a fever came, and in the city of Aquapendente, a green, quiet, beautiful spot on the confines of the Papal States, the Blessed John gave back his soul to God, and went to see Him whom he had been trying to copy with all the peculiar picturesque simplicity of the Middle Ages. Those ages present few pictures equal in beauty to that depicted in the tender quaint old Chronicle of the Blessed Colombini, and it was a book St Philip was constantly fingering, and recommended to others as a simple tale that had the power to laugh all pride to scorn. Now this was a copy of Jesus in a pictorial way, and in the external, objective style of mediaBval art When I call St Philip a copy of Jesus, I do not mean this, but something deeper and more significant

I have tried your patience, perhaps, more than I need have done. I have come a long way and by a roundabout road to my point, lest I should take you unawares, and startle you, and so prevent myself from convincing you. Now, I am going to be so bold as to put before you my dear Father St Philip, as the portrait of Jesus, trusting that the example of what our Catholic forefathers have said of St Francis will shield me from the charge of being profane.

We must preface these points of resemblance with a brief and bare sketch of St Philip's life, considered in its chronological developement The first sixteen years of his life were spent at home in Florence; a trifling act of petulance seems the only thing approaching to sin which has been recorded, and it is universally believed that he carried with him to the grave the unsullied whiteness of his baptism. The characteristics of his boyhood were innocence and seriousness mingled in an unusual way; and the supernatural was developed about him so early, that we read of his recovering, while yet a boy, things which he had lost, by praying for them. The sweetness of his disposition and the winningness of his manner are proved not only by actual record, but by the facts that he was known through Florence by the nickname of "The Good Pippo," and that, when his mother was dead, he so won the heart of his stepmother, that his biographer says, " She loved him as tenderly as if he had been her own child; so that when he left Florence she wept bitterly, and on her death-bed appeared to have him always before her, kept naming his name, and declared that the very remembrance of him was a refreshment to her." The next epoch of Philip's life embraces two years which he spent with his uncle Romolo, a merchant of San Germano, at the foot of Monte Cassino. There he spent his time in prayer upon a mountain dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity, received his first call from God, renounced the joys of home, the faces of relatives, the promises of his uncle's inheritance, and turning his back upon the world, which he never looked in the face again, he entered Rome an almost friendless pilgrim, apparently without an object or a plan, but simply sure in his heart that whither God had called him, thither had he gone. The third epoch of his life embraces eleven years, bringing him to the age of twenty-nine. These years were spent in abstinence of the most austere kind, and continual prayer, and a great portion of them, whole days and nights together, in those strange refuges of the early Church, the subterraneans or catacombs of

St Sebastian. Tet these eleven years witnessed a remarkable change in him, though we are unable to fix the exact year in which it took place. During the earlier portion of these eleven years he applied himself to philosophical and theological studies, and cultivated his peculiar talent for poetry. Later on, God called him closer to Himself; St. Thomas was shut; the hours of study were added to his hours of contemplation; and the young poet abandoned his hopes of fame, and sacrificed to God his sonnets, and his gift of rhyme. In 1538, when he was but twenty-five years old, and a layman, he was called to employ himself for the souls of others, and for that end made use of his extraordinary talent for conversation, "going about the squares, shops, schools, and stalls, talking with all sorts of persons in a most engaging way about spiritual things." The fourth epoch of his life begins in 1544, his thirtieth year, when, in the catacombs of St Sebastian, being at prayer there a little before the festival of Whitsun-4ide, the Holy Ghost entered his heart miraculously as a globe of fire, bursting his ribs asunder. His life now became ecstatic: he used to be seen in the porticoes of the churches, and elsewhere, rolling on the ground, as one beside himself with the vehemence of the interior fire which consumed him. And at last his ecstasies so nearly exhausted him, that he prayed to have them moderated; a petition which was at once granted by Him who had vouchsafed to take such strange possession of his heart The fifth epoch of his life begins in 1548, when he was thirty-three. It was then that he had attracted to himself fifteen poor and unlearned men, of uncommon simplicity and singular holiness; and with these fifteen disciples he started the Confraternity of the Pilgrims and the Convalescents, which is still so famous in Rome, and also gave a new impulse to the

A PORTBAIT OF JESUS.

devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, by commencing a monthly Exposition, at which, though yet a layman, he used to preach, and that with such supernatural effect, that we read of one sermon alone converting " thirty dissolute youths." The sixth epoch of his life, which begins in 1551, the Council of Trent still sitting, and Philip being thirty-six years old, starts with his priesthood, and his getting together a second knot of disciples of seven or eight, of the higher ranks, and so beginning the exercises of the Oratory at San Girolamo. It ends on St Cecilia's Day, 1583, a period of nearly thirty-three years, when Philip was in his sixty-ninth year, and went in procession through the streets with his disciples, with all his pots and pans and furniture, to the ridicule of the multitude, from San Girolamo to the Vallicella, which is now the Church of the Oratory at Rome. The seventh and last epoch of his life brings us down to the 26th of May, 1595, when he died that marvellous death which is so beautifully narrated in Bacci's Life of him, 255 years ago this very day.

Even from this dry sketch of his life, you may perceive, my Brethren, that St. Philip's Life was on the whole a quiet life like that of his Master. There is nothing of romance about it, and almost less of stirring vicissitude than ordinary lives of eighty years could shew. His heroism was of the quiet kind; the calm perseverance and everyday consistency of his life was itself supernatural God, through the Evangelist St John, had designated Rome as Philip's Indies, and he rarely went beyond its walls. His chief recreation was to mount the steep hill of Sant' Onofrio, and thence to gaze upon the little populous kingdom which God had given him, and which he ruled with a peaceful but active sovereignty as absolute as his who wore the triple crown.

Now let me call your attention to some features of St Philip which make him so striking a resemblance of our Most Blessed Lord.

1. First, then, his way of life was the most perfect way of which our Lord had set the example; it was not exclusively active, nor yet exclusively contemplative, but the mixed life which St Thomas considered the most perfect of all. It was marked by a scrupulous absence of all singularity. When in company, he ate as others did, and conformed to their ways. Although he was a great lover of religious orders, he never took the vows of religion upon him; neither, although he came as a popular reformer, and among a very corrupt populace, did he found a religious order. He always resolutely opposed the introduction of vows into his Congregation, and said that it was contrary to our Blessed Lady's will, and that she was the foundress of the Congregation. Nay, it almost seems as if he tried not to found a Congregation at all. He was led to it in spite of himself. As our Lord was the founder of the Secular Clergy, and left to St John the Baptist the task of setting the pattern to the Regular Orders, so St Philip would have his children live together in apostolic community of simplicity and free will, and remain members of the divinely instituted body of the Secular Clergy. His taste, as we shall see hereafter, led him altogether to the first times of primitive Christianity, and not to the later glories and gorgeous romance of the Church. His austerities, and especially his abstinence, were very great; but it is not till we come to reflect upon them that we get to realize them. By the side of St Charles, or St Pius, they look little, as our Lord's mortifications did when men compared them with those of the Baptist; and, like our Lord's, they consisted chiefly in three things, a quiet unintermitting absence of all comforts, an almost unreflecting detachment from worldly cares and interests, and an habitually declining to get out of the way of crosses, All these points might be illustrated very fully from his life. He lived as it were in the continual presence of the Madonna, seeing her, hearing her, and talking to her. He obeyed her in every thing, as his foundress and mother, and carried out faithfully all the inspirations with which she favoured him. Need I stop to point out how this familiar intercourse and filial obedience must remind us of our Lord? As our Blessed Lord confined Himself to the narrow limits of Judaea, and scrupled even to do works of mercy for foreigners, leaving the wide world for the feet of His apostles, who were to do greater works than He did; so, though St Philip's heart burned for the far-off Indies, and for the crown of Martyrdom, and in the vehemence of his spirit he followed Xavier with a holy envy, yet he was but sent to the sheep of the Holy City, and to his flock he kept himself with Jberoic perseverance. He left it to his children to cover Mexico and South America with Oratories, and to convert Ceylon by the spiritual exercises and wonder-working pictures of their holy Father. As Jesus wept at the sight of Jerusalem, and yearned over the people of God's ancient choice, so it is said of Philip, that when by chance he met a Jew in the streets, " his desire for his conversion was so great that he broke out into sighs and tears; " and he brought many of those lost ones of the House of Israel into his Master's fold. In imitation of our Saviour's commiseration for heretical Samaria, he too left his confessional, thirsting for souls, and strove to win the heretic Pateologo, as he was being led out to execution; and how much is there to remind us of our Lord's way with the woman of Samaria, when at last the wretched man, aroused by grace, eagerly inquires for " the man who speaks with the simplicity of the Gospel "!

Once more: who, in reading the Gospels, is not struck with the way in which our Blessed Lord speaks of the Holy Spirit, and the jealousy with which He protects His honour, in comparison with His forgivingness towards those who outrage Himself? I am not speaking of our Blessed Lord, as if He, like His Saints, had special devotions: but I wish to call your attention to the way in which, to use very human words, He vouchsafes to manifest to us His blessed love of the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity. If I may dare to say so, He speaks unlike His common self when He speaks of Him. That awful passage about the unforgiven sin, which rises up from all His other teaching with terrific singularity, like some dark and solitary and awe-inspiring rock from the bosom of the plain sea, must be in every one's mind; and then again those words, so hard to understand and harder still to realize, that the absence of Jesus could be a gain, since it was the condition of the coming of the Holy Ghost. Now look along the whole line of Saints, and where will you find one of whom you can say that a special, unusual, nay, as you know, supernatural devotion to the Third Blessed Person of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity, was a characteristic, except of St Philip? It has not pleased our Lord to give us the authentic details of St Joseph's life; but we may well conceive of a very peculiar devotion in that blessed Patriarch towards the Divine Person who was our Lady's Spouse, and who had vouchsafed to overshadow her at the moment of the Incarnation. Of St Gregory the Great, too, devotion to whom Philip left as an heirloom to his Congregation, and of St

Gregory VlL, we read things which would lead us to infer the same. But in no case is there anything so explicit or detailed about this devotion as in St Philip. There was the miraculous entrance of the Holy Ghost into his heart, and all its subsequent unearthly palpitations, and fiery heat physically perceived by those who approached him; and it is said that he never omitted saying the Collect of the Holy Ghost at Mass when the rubrics allowed him to do so, because of his ardent devotion to that Divine Person. Surely all these things indicate a more than common or fortuitous or pictorial similitude between our Blessed Lord's life and that of our holy Father, St Philip.

2. From his manner of life let us turn to his method of working, especially with his Disciples. Here his resemblance to our Lord becomes still more striking. He wrote no books; he left no formal rule; he sketched out no definite system. He spoke, and his power was in his speech; like Him of whom it was said, that He spake as never man spake before. His strength was in personal influence, and he trusted to it Conversation and manner were the two great gifts God had given him, and he used them quite marvellously. He formed a school of men, not a magnificent and comprehensive legislation, as his blessed contemporary, St Ignatius. His was a living apostolate of flesh and blood; and personal influence, and fluent speech, and simple manner, have been the secrets of his children's success, wherever they have imbibed the true spirit of his Institute: the absence of them the cause of their partial or their ill success. The simplicity and primitive style of his early penitents, as depicted in his Life, are very striking. His way with them, his claim of obedience, yet his forbearance, his concealment of his sanctity even from them, the remarkable manner in which he called people in the midst of the streets of Rome to come and follow him, like the vocations of the first Apostles: — these, and many other things of a like nature, present remarkable points of resemblance to our Lord: and when you consider the age in which St. Philip lived, this oral teaching, and absence of system, and comparative foregoing of literary influence, become still more significant.

3. Look again at his manner with strangers. No one has read his Life without being struck by *his bearing towards sinners, and the way in which he sought them out, the uncommon kindness and patience with which he treated them, and altogether the singular devotion he had for them. As Jesus even gave scandal by becoming the companion and advocate of sinners; so did Philip. It is acknowledged on all hands that there was something special about him in this respect. " By a particular inspiration," says his biographer, u he began to converse with men of the very worst lives." The streets, the shops, the stalls, the squares, the vineyards, were his preaching-places. The characteristics of his preaching were simplicity, fervour, spirituality, absence of rigour, allowance for men's weakness, inculcation of joyousness, gaiety of demeanour, variety, matter suitable to all, manner that seemed to win the most opposite dispositions. He was seen going about with a troop of disciples at his heels, as Christlike a figure as ever was beheld in the Church of God; as like our Lord in the streets of the Holy City and the courts of its temple, as St Francis by the shores of the lake of Perugia, with his disciple taking the toll from the fish's mouth, resembled Him on the banks of the sea of Tiberias. Nay, sometimes he spoke and acted as though there were something expiatory about him, and that he would do the penance which he saw was frightening or might frighten the returning sinner.

4. I must not omit, although I have spoken of it before, to call to your remembrance the almost habitual ecstasies which he had; so that at table, and in the Pope's antechamber, as well as in spiritual actions, he was continually going off into ecstasy; and thus enjoying a sort of vision of God before the time, and that for almost half his natural life, just as our Lord was Comprehensor all the while that He was Viator too. As to that perpetual efflux of miraculous energy which went out from him, it is difficult to conceive what common life must have looked like in Rome, when such a man was going about its streets — may I say it? — like another Christ, with virtue passing from the very fringes of his garments, nay, from the very rags which bound his sores.

5. Again: let a man take up St Philip's Life, and read it through from beginning to end, looking only for one thing — the way in which others regarded him. You will find people acting, in his absence, as if he were present, from a calm and practical conviction that he, wherever he was, knew what they were doing. Others durst not come into his presence with an unconfessed sin upon their conscience. He could tell wTiat people had dreamed, and they knew it. When he sent them on an errand, he could see how they behaved along the streets, and they were conscious of it, and felt his eye on them. Men falling into rivers invoked him, while living, as if he could hear them, and they were saved. If the physicians ordered one thing and Philip another, his penitents obeyed him rather than the physicians. Superiors and novice-masters, and even religious orders trusted their most delicate interests to him. In the matter of vocation he was looked npon as infallible. You will find, in his Life, those who by their behaviour will remind you of Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus, and others in the Gospel history. Read the Life with this view, and see what things it will open out to you. I think it was Origen who said of our Lord, that He was to each what each took Him for: it is quite remarkable how this feature too is verified in St. Philip. It is difficult to realize what would happen to our daily course of life, if we lived in the company of one who exerted such a supernatural influence over us, and of whose doings and sayings we should habitually take so entirely a supernatural view. It would be a kind of practice of the Presence of God even by the senses; for what we should fear and love would not be what was natural in Philip, but what was God's gift and presence in His creature.

There does not seem any method of accounting for the way in which St Philip was regarded by his disciples, or for his extraordinary influence over them, except by calling it supernatural He did not pass over the world, changing from one set of companions to another: he remained in the same place, and in a great measure with the same persons. Boys grew up to be men, young prelates to be cardinals, cardinals to be popes; while everything else changed with them, their devotion to St Philip and his influence over them remained the same. Some of his spiritual children lived with him, and were under his own eye nearly all day long, and that for a score of years or more; they were privy to all the minute actions of his daily life, yet their reverence for him increased instead of being impaired. It is a common saying that no man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre; and certainly the intercourse of daily life is not long in bringing us to the end of most men. We " travel over their minds," as Boswell used to say; we get to know their excellencies, and the length and breadth of their characters; we may continue to love them and to prize their company, but we have nothing left to learn about them, and in most cases love and forbearance must more or less stand in the stead of respect. But St. Philip was perpetually growing before the eyes of his companions. When they came to die, they expressed surprise, as Niccolo Gigli did, that they had not known Philip before. It was a lifelong lesson to learn him, and life was done before the lesson was learned. It is difficult to say in what his power of attraction resided; but men felt it to be irresistible. When he detached some of his spiritual children from San Girolamo to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, they used to go to the Saint, at San Girolamo, to confession every morning; then a second time to preach, or hear the preaching there, and then a third time to the evening prayer. This lasted for ten years, and, as Bacci relates, they " never missed, winter, or summer. Indeed, neither rain nor hardly any other outward hindrance caused them to fail at the accustomed services at San Girolamo." It seemed as if they could not keep away from St Philip; they gravitated to him as by a law. People flocked around him in such a way as to attract the notice of the Cardinal Vicar, who, "misled by ill-natured information, summoned Philip before him, and rebuked him with great severity. * Are you not ashamed,' said he, ' you who make such a profession of despising the world, of gathering together such a multitude of persons to court popular repute, and under the pretence of sanctity thus to hunt for preferment?' When he had thus bitterly reproved him, he forbade him to hear confessions for fifteen days, or to have any more exercises without fresh license, or to go about with any company of persons, threatening him with imprisonment if he was disobedient" Bacci goes on to say: " Philip had always esteemed obedience above eveiything else, especially towards ecclesiastical superiors, and, therefore, he forbade his disciples to go with him. He told them to have patience, for that the world would find out the truth at last, and meanwhile they were to pray. Indeed, to hinder them as much as he could from following him, he had recourse to an artifice, for, when they went out of the house, he told some that they were to go to one place, and others that they were to go to another place; yet, for all that, they could not bear to be without him, and so they used to step aside and wait for him, and, when he was passed, they followed him at a distance." Let me quote one more passage from Bacci, as to the extent and degree of Philip's influence. " It was not only from his subjects* that he exacted the most scrupulous and prompt obedience, but from all his penitents, and those who were devoted to him. Indeed, there was nothing, however difficult, which the majority of them would not readily have attempted at his command. Cardinal Tarugi affirms, that though his subjects were not bound to him by a vow of obedience, yet some of them almost equalled the old monks of Egypt in the exactitude of their submission; and on some other occasions, when the Cardinal was speaking upon this subject, and exhorting some of our house to obedience, he said, that so far as he knew, there was no religious superior, not even of old times, that was more readily and blindly obeyed than Philip was, not by his subjects only, but by his disciples and penitents; so beloved and feared was he by all of them. Neither was

A POBTRAIT OF JESUS* this assertion unfounded; for many of their own accord affirmed, that they had such faith in Philip, that if he had said to them, ' throw yourself out of the window,' they would have done so without fail; and others declared, that if he had ordered them to throw themselves into the fire, they would have done so without reasoning upon it, because they considered his words as inspired by God." And then he goes on to relate a number of instances in order that " all this may not appear exaggerated."

Yet this influence, which so allured men, was, after all, a restraint upon them. No one could ever feel quite at his ease with Philip, however tenderly he might be devoted to the Saint. The love of his disciples was never without fear. Judging from Bacci's voluminous records, no one ever dared to take a liberty with the holy Father. He was never, so to speak, in his undress, never off his guard, never lowering himself below his usual level, so as to allow of greater freedom and intimacy on the part of his disciples. Thus nothing about him ever became common, and reverence for him never wore away. We should not have supposed that such an influence as this would have been so irresistibly attractive to the gay nobility and light-hearted youth of Rome. Even now, those who are devoted to St. Philip feel something of this peculiar influence. They begin by thinking him an easy saint, all merriment and lightness, all familiarity and endearment, and they imagine they shall soon be on the best possible terms with him. Then, as they get to know him better, by reading his Life, by imitating his ways, and by praying to him, somehow a change takes place; they begin to see that his sweet-looking picture is, after all, very stern and grave, and that, when they first read his Life, the delight of one half of it made them quite forget the other half; and at last the idea of St. Philip steadies itself in their minds, and exerts an influence over them similar to that which his disciples acknowledged while he was alive. Bacci's Life of the Saint is not a bad illustration of the way in which men looked upon him; they did not even venture to praise him, or, to speak more truly, it never came to them to praise one who was simply above all standards to which they could refer their praise. No one who has studied Bacci will think it fanciful to compare it with the style of the Four Gospels; and this is but another way of saying that St Philip was a portrait of our Blessed Lord. * 6. I must not pass altogether over certain other resemblances, which may, however, be more like accidents. These similitudes are more striking at first sight, but they do not, on mature reflection, leave so lasting a conviction behind, and I do not wish to make much of them; still I can hardly be silent about them with reverence, because I cannot bring myself to think them merely accidental, especially when we consider the complete supernaturalness of St. Philip in every respect. His devotion to Rome, whither Jesus sent St. Peter to place the Holy See, is a thing of this kind. When people came in pilgrimage to Jesus He was moved to compassion, and said c They have nothing to eat:" so St Philip yearned over the pilgrims, and founded his confraternity that they might not be sent away fasting. "Be not ye called Master," said our Lord: so from St Philip, says his biographer, " came the custom in our congregation of calling the superior by the simple title of The Father." " Enter into thy chamber and shut to the door, and pray to thy Father who is in secret," says our Lord: so St Philip forbids seeking for sweetness or making a show of devotion in the church, even though the Blessed Sacrament would naturally lure us thither, and enjoins prayer in our rooms; not, of course, to the exclusion of visiting the Most Holy in His Tabernacle, but so as to avoid any appearance of more than common devotion, and at times when we think it likely that our feelings may overcome us at our prayers, and so lead to some outward show of piety. Affectionate sympathy with animals and nature characterized our holy Father, as it did his Master. His wonderful forbearance in making use of his supernatural knowledge, which might easily have chilled the affectionate familiarity of his disciples, is remarkable in St Philip. The way in which fear and love co-existed in the minds of his subjects towards him, forcibly reminds us of our Lord and the Apostles. When some complained to our Lord that others were making use of His Name, He replied, "He that is not against Me is for Me;" so, when St Philip was told that others in Rome were copying the peculiar exercises of the Oratory, his answer was, " Would to God that all the Lord's people were prophets." We read of people coming to him by night, because they feared being observed by day, as Nicodemus of old. His hands had a special virtue in them, like our Lord's. He left his work unfinished, only beginning at his death; as if the training of his Apostolate was all he looked to, just as the Church began after our Lord had ascended. He, the most impartial of fathers and equable of superiors, universal in his love, never unequal in his considerateness, — even he had a favourite disciple, whom his brethren, with St John before their eyes, nicknamed the €€ Disciple whom Philip loved": and yet (it was Philip's art) Tarugi or Baronius had no more jealousy of Pietro Consolini than Peter had of John, when his long hair was streaming over that Sacred Bosom in which the head of the child-like virgin Apostle was so confidently nestling. But these things might be multiplied indefinitely-I do not rest upon them. When we love St Philip, they are interesting; perhaps they may be something more than interesting, if they suggest devotion.

7, I suppose most readers of the Gospel must have been struck with the fact, that although the Apostles had such an amount of knowledge of our Blessed Lord, had seen His miracles, and had so much experience of Him, yet they never seem to have been able to put real confidence in Him in times of trial It is as if their knowledge was not practical to them; and it may have arisen from the spirit of concealment which was such a feature in our Blessed Lord's humility: though this can by no means be taken as the whole account of the matter. Now there is the very same feature in the behaviour of St. Philip's children to him. Instances abound on all hands. They want to buy the monastery of the Poor Clares, when he told them not: nay, to sum up all instances in one: — F. Niccold Gigli was a favourite disciple of St Philip; he lived under him in the Congregation of the Oratory for twenty years; yet he so little estimated Philip's supernatural graces, than when, on his death-bed, he was troubled by the evil spirits, and Philip drove them away, Niccold said, u O my Father! why have I not known thee before? Now that I die, I begin to know who and what thou art!" May not this remind us of that gentle expostulation made to an Apostle — " Have I been so long time with you, and have you not known Me?"

8. It would take me too long to draw out the parallel between the opposition to St Philip and that which our Lord met with. If Jesus was called "a glutton and a winedrinker"; so was the Saint, because of the frugal repast he gave his followers on their pilgrimages to the Seven Churches. If our Lord was charged with sedition; so was Philip; and the simple Apostolic exercises of the Oratory, and Philip's hold over his spellbound followers, were spitefully invested with a dangerous political character. If our Lord was looked upon as beside Himself; so was St. Philip over and over again. If our Lord was accused of trying to make Himself the head of a faction; so was St Philip, by one high in office, and who punished him for it

But I must not forget, my Brethren, that you cannot have the same interest in all the minute details of St. Philip's life that we his children naturally have, and that St Philip in the Church is your St. Philip, St Philip in the House is ours: so here I will conclude my proof, and leave it with you. What I have wished to do is simply to shew you that the true idea of St Philip is, that he was a copy of Jesus, not in any one respect, but, so far as he could be, a copy of Him altogether, given by God for the Church of Modern Times, a second Apostle of Rome, a fresh Peter, to start an apostolical kindheartedness and simplicity anew. Will you call it a play upon words if I quote a text of Scripture? " And Jesus looking upon him, said, Thou art Simon, the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is interpreted Peter. On the following day He would go forth into Galilee; and He findeth Philip. And Jesus said to him, Follow Me. Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter."

One word more: — I have not done justice to my own idea; I ought to have brought it out more distinctly. I have not sufficiently remembered that a hint at St. Philip's life is not necessarily enough for you, because it is more than enough for us his children. When feelings are so deep as to become abiding and household feelings, a man is more awkward in uttering them than when he first seized the idea, shining, distinct, external, from off the surface of some current of meditation. You have all your patron Saints; and you know what it is to love them. You pray often and ardently to St Philip, and you best know the hold which the gay and good old Saint has got upon your hearts, each one of you. But you cannot know — and an Oratorian cannot tell you, it is beyond his power — the difference between devotion to St. Philip, and obedience to him under his own rule and beneath his own roof.

O my Father! never did a Saint in Heaven dwell so really on earth as thou dost; and never did children love father as we love thee, and never did they more sacredljr fear a father's infrequent coldness or the grave majesty of his seemingly inspired displeasure. There thy pale Tuscan face shines out amid the lights, thine ample brow, the piercing softness of thine eye, the lips that seem even now tremulous with words of wisdom, thy grace-dispensing hands, and those never-forgotten beads. But thy face as I see it on the air, thy breath that seems to play upon my countenance, thy hand whose touch I feel, thy voice that I am momentarily expecting to hear, while I go about thy house, do the community acts which thou wouldst have me do, or while, alas! still more, I follow my own silly will and neglect thy rule — this is an abiding, a day and night image of thee, to which that picture is so incomparably poor a thing, that it hinders more than helps my memory of thee. I know more of thee every day: I am always learning some new thing about thee; and when I die, like Niccolo Gigli, I shall know that I have never known thee before. Take us all, my Father, — take my fathers and brothers and myself, do what thou wilt for us, do what thou wilt with us — and in the same proportion as we realize and obey and love thy presence while we live, so, Father, be thy succour of us at the last!

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