Sermon III. St. Vincent's Love of Souls

Within the same Octave.

ST. VINCENT'S LOYE OF SOULS.

I thirst. ST. JOHN xix. 28.

All the words of our divine Lord have a manifold meaning, and none more so than the last seven which He uttered on the Cross. And of those seven, perhaps none are more full than these — ' I thirst.' For our divine Lord did not only express the thirst which parched His lips in the hour of His agony, which was in itself a symbol of a deeper mystery; He spoke also of the perpetual thirst for the glory of God and the redemption of the world, which had consumed Him in every hour of His three-and-thirty years on earth; in a word, the thirst for souls, the thirst for the salvation of men, the thirst for the accomplishment of His passion, and the thirst for the glory of His Father. It was of this He spoke when He said, (I am come to send fire upon the earth; and what will I hut that it he kindled P'1 and again, to the disciple who was ahout to hetray Him, ' That which thou doest, do quickly;'2 and again to them all: ' I have a haptism, wherewith I am to he "baptised; and how am I straitened until it he accomplished?'8 Again and again, He manifested His impatience for the accomplishment of His passion, because it was the redemption of the world, and the revelation of His Father's glory.

And this thirst for souls, which springs from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, has descended to the heart of His mystical Body; for the heart of the Church is the Heart of Jesus. His own presence and His own charity, shed abroad in the Church, are its heart and life. The most powerful and constraining affection of the Church of Christ on earth has ever been the thirst for the salvation of men. From the hour when the Apostles went out with their world-wide commission, to make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost — from that hour the Church has been a missionary body, always sending forth its evangelists, always seeking and saving ' that which was lost;'4 going to and fro in the track of the

1 St. Luke xii. 49. 2 St. John xiii. 27.

3 St. Luke xii. 50. 4 St. Matthew xviii. 11.

Good Shepherd; sending forth its pastors to find the lost sheep of the mystical Israel of God.

And this thirst for souls is nothing more than the heating and the pulse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus vibrating through His Church, perpetually replenished by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, who first came down upon the Apostles, and has descended from age to age, from succession to succession, in the unction of the Episcopate, and in the consecration of the multitude of pastors. It is poured out into the heart of the priest when his ordination makes him partaker of the priesthood of Jesus Christ. The love of souls has been his motive in seeking the priesthood, and it is multiplied, augmented, and kindled more and more in the hour when he receives the sacerdotal grace, and his hands are anointed in the form of the Cross, that he may offer the Sacrifice of Jesus for the sin of the world. It has been the mark of every servant of God, that he has desired to save first his own soul, and then to save the souls of other men; for it is well and terribly said, that no priest shall enter into the kingdom of God alone. If he has saved no other soul, he shall hardly save his own; if his life and his influence has not been such as to convert others, he shall hardly have walked in the way of penance himself. If he has not kindled others with the love of God, it is because he has not loved Him. If he has not attracted others to a life of prayer, it is hecause he has not heen a man of prayer. If, then, he hrings no other soul to salvation, how hard shall it he for that priest to enter into the kingdom of God! The love of souls, therefore, has heen the special mark of the servants and Saints of God. They have heen greatly illuminated in their intellect; they have been largely endowed with various gifts of the Holy Ghost, and with natural and supernatural perfections; but these are not the marks which decisively distinguish them from other men. It is the unresting, insatiate thirst for the salvation of souls. This is the one incommunicable mark of the servants of God. It is a sense which other men seem not to possess — a sort of sixth sense, a spiritual perception opened in their understanding, and setting fire to their heart, which other men cannot understand. They cannot conceive why it is that a multitude of men, priests and lay-men, have in all ages made themselves fools, as it were, to save souls; stripped themselves of their wealth, abandoned their honours, left their homes, exposed themselves to perils, laid down their lives, to save souls. And what, after all, are souls? Who has ever seen them? The metaphysicians and philogophers of the world tell us there are no such things as souls; and yet for these intangible, invisible, and incredible things the servants and Saints of God have worn themselves away by toil, and given their lives by martyrdom.

Now, the love of souls is the peculiar feature in the character of St. Vincent; and this is the point I wish to illustrate from his life. In what, then, does the zeal for souls consist? St. Vincent's description of it is this: It is an intense desire for the glory of God by the destruction of sin, by the cleansing of every spot from the souls of men; a desire that souls may be sanctified in all places, and at all times, and in all actions, and in all words, and in all thoughts, and in all motives, until the words of the Lord's Prayer shall come to pass — (Hallowed be Thy name; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.' Now this, in one description, is the zeal or the love of souls; and there is mixed into it a tenderness, an affection, a generosity, a self-denial, and a self-sacrifice, which consumes the man who possesses it, or, rather, whom it possesses.

I will illustrate this by a few examples from the life of St. Vincent; for my purpose is not to dwell upon it in detail: and I am induced to do so, because I am aware that I speak to the brethren of the Conferences of St. Vincent of Paul in London, gathered together here to-day, whose work, in one word, is this — to labour to save souls.

First, that which may be called the second conversion of St. Vincent, or the turning-point in his life — that is, the crisis which determined him to give himself for ever to labour for souls, and for the souls of the poor — was this: While he was in the court of the Queen of France, there was one of her chaplains, a learned man, who was intensely and perpetually troubled by temptations against the faith. He was so harassed, and driven as it were to desperation, by these interior trials, that he had no rest day or night. His life was a misery; he could hardly say Mass; he could hardly recite the Breviary; he could hardly say his prayers. At last he came and opened his case to St. Vincent. St. Vincent bade him, whenever he was tempted, to point to Rome, and make an act of faith in the infallible Church of God. He practised this for a while, but still the temptations assailed him. St. Vincent then made a solemn offering of himself to Almighty God, and prayed that this spirit of temptation against the faith might depart from his poor brother, and might enter into himself. He gave himself for him, like a man nursing another in the plague. So it came to pass; for the chaplain was entirely delivered from the temptations against the faith, and St. Yincent from that time was tormented by them. He, in turn, could hardly bear his own existence. After two or three years in this state of trial, he once more made an offering of himself; and that offering was to labour, living and dying, for the souls of the poor, if only Almighty God would set him free. God accepted his offering. He was entirely delivered from these spiritual trials; and how he kept his word his whole life attests.

Again, we find that St. Vincent had an extraordinary desire for martyrdom. He was perpetually saying; ' I would to God that I could go to India, or to a heathen country, and that there I might enjoy the happiness of preaching to the poor heathen, and of laying down my life for the sake of Christ.' He said, when eighty years old, ' With all my infirmities upon me, and with my legs so swollen that I cannot walk, if only I could go to India — if I could only go to some heathen land and die a martyr — I would go, even though I were to die by the way.' Again, when some of his Fathers were in the city of Genoa, where the plague was raging, he wrote to them, and said: * Spare not yourselves; spare nothing; spare not your health; spare not even your life; for what is it to lay down life for the sake of Jesus, and the souls for whom He died?' Again, he wrote to the Fathers who were in Barhary, and said: ' If one soul is so precious, that we cannot refuse to give our natural life to save it, how much more precious are the multitudes of souls amongst whom you labour! Spare not your lives, but be willing to give yourselves for the love of Jesus.' And when bowed down with years — that is, some five years before his death, entirely overcome as he was with infirmities gathering heavily upon him — even then he insisted upon going as companion with some of his Fathers to give a Mission, and, with his swollen and enfeebled limbs, he took part in the whole of their labours.

Again, we read, he said: ' If only I could save a soul by giving myself for it, I would count that my life was well bestowed.' And he was ready, with his own life, to save not only the spiritual life of his neighbour, but the temporal life also; for when once he saw a poor peasant followed by a band of soldiers, with their weapons drawn, to take his life, he threw himself between them, and there stood to receive the death which they were about to inflict upon the other. And this same spirit has descended to his children; for in one of the last revolutions in Paris, one of his daughters — whose name can never be mentioned without veneration, for it is certainly written in the Book of Life, the Soeur Kosalie — when a poor man had fled into a doorway, and armed men were following him, came, and like her father, placed herself upon the threshold, saying: ' If you take the life of this man, it is through mine.' In one word, I may say that St. Vincent was kindled with this love for souls to such an extent, that it was the one dominant passion of his long life. It governed him, it penetrated him through and through, it circulated through his blood, it beat in his heart, and was the one law of his existence. The whole life of St. Vincent may be summed up in it. It was seen not only in his own labours, but also in the joy he had in the labours of those whom he had gathered around him; and not only in the labours of his own sons and daughters, but in the labours of all the servants of God. He took an intense delight in the successes of all those who were gathering in souls for Jesus Christ; as, for example, in the missions of the Jesuit Fathers, of whom he said, ' Our Fathers are only fit to bear the burdens, or to gather up the few gleanings after these great reapers in the field of our Lord.'

Let us now enter into this matter a little more closely. Why are we bound to have this zeal, this thirst for the salvation of souls? What are the motives and reasons for it?

1. And, first, what is the soul? Have you ever appreciated what it is? Next after God, it is the most glorious and the most precious of all heings that exist. It is the likeness of God. A soul hasan endless capacity, either of bliss, which is the participation of the beatitude of God, or of an agony which the heart of man cannot conceive. Even in the little child, whom you pass in the street, there is the capacity of a sanctity, of a love of God, of a knowledge of God, and of an eternal beatitude, which they alone can apprehend who are before the Throne. Even in the poor little bare-headed, barefooted children that perish in our streets, there is this mystery of eternal life, this immortality, and this boundless capacity for the love and the bliss of God. They may be angels, and heirs with angels, to all eternity; or they may become devils, and companions of devils, to all eternity. And as the image of God in the soul of man is its beauty and its glory, so its darkening and distortion is its deformity and its death. If the image of God in the soul be extinguished by sin, no words but the words of our Lord can describe its doom, — * their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.'5 This, then, is the first motive to the love of souls — that they must he for ever in eternal life or in eternal death; in eternal hliss, or in eternal misery; in eternal joy, or in eternal anguish.

How is it possible that we believe these things, and that we can live so tamely, so self-indulgently, so carelessly, and so full of self-love, squandering upon ourselves that by which we know not how many souls might be saved?

2. Then farther. If we would appreciate the value of souls, we must endeavour to understand how God loves every several soul that He has created. But if we do not feel the love of God to our own souls, it is not wonderful that we are not able to appreciate the love of God to others. God has made the soul to His own image; that is, He has communicated to it all that He can bestow. There is nothing that He has kept back except His own nature; for the nature of God is uncreated, and the uncreated nature cannot be communicated. God has therefore communicated to us all that He can of His perfections, His image and likeness. He has given us an intellect, a will, a heart full of loving 5 St. Mark ix. 45.

affections; and God so loves the creature He has made — and made to the perfect likeness of Himself— that when man sinned, He gave His own Son to redeem him. Therefore St. Vincent used to say: ' My brethren, love every soul, for this reason: every soul is the image of God, and every soul is the object of the love of God.'

3. And then again. Every soul is purchased by the Blood of Jesus; and the purchase-price fixes its worth. If you desire to appreciate what a soul is worth, take the price of the Blood of Jesus. This is the mark which stamps it with its true value. Our Lord spoke with a divine truth when He said: 'What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?'6 The soul of man is so inappreciable by man, that the only way for God to make us understand what a soul is worth was, that His own Son should become incarnate, and give His precious Blood for it. The ransom is the measure of its worth; -but this ransom is infinite in price, and the price of the soul therefore exceeds all the measures we can conceive. And so St. Vincent used to say: ' 0, my Jesus, what brought Thee from heaven? what made Thee be-

6 St. Mark viii. 36, 37.

come man? what made Thee shed Thy Blood upon the Cross? It was the love of Thy neighbour.' And again he said: ' Poor priest, who goest ahout hegging for bread, and sleepest under the corner of the hedge, pierced through with cold, what has brought thee to this? The love of thy neighbour.'

4. Another reason is, because every soul is in such danger of perishing — because it is so easy to perish — because it is so hard to be saved. Our divine Lord has said: ' Narrow is the gate and strait is the way that leadeth to life, and few there are that find it. Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat.'7 But why is it so hard to be saved, and so easy to be lost? Because sin is so strong and so subtle, and, what is worse, so sweet. Because sin, with its seven mouths, and with its seven streams of poisonous breath, the seven mortal sins of the flesh and of the spirit, is so alluring and so intoxicating, that myriads of souls are slain by it. Because the world is so fair, so bright, and so dazzling, and sin is like a net spread over the face of the earth, that few are the feet that are not entangled in it at some time, and many are the feet that do not escape out of the net at last. Be-

7 St. Matt. vii. 13, 14.

cause self is so powerful and so deceitful, that few are they who are not living for self rather than for God. For ' all seek the things that are their own, and not the things that are Jesus Christ's.'8 Because many there are who will find at last that they have been living for themselves, that is, 'without God in this world.'9

Among the sorrows of Jesus in Gethsemani, the thought of the multitudes that shall he lost was heaviest of all. Under the shadows of the olive-trees He saw before Him the countless showers of lost souls descending into the pit: and that, after all His passion, after all His agony, after all His love, to be lost eternally; and in the anguish of that vision His sacred Blood trickled like great drops of sweat upon the ground.

Throughout the whole world, among the races of the heathen, souls, created in the likeness of God, capable of knowing, of loving God, and of being crowned with glory through all eternity, are dying without light and without Christ in the world. Year by year, and day by day, and moment by moment, they are ascending up before the Judge, all seamed, and scarred, and maimed, and with the plague-spot of sin upon them; and from the presence

8 Philip, ii. 21. 9 Eplies. ii. 12.

of their Judge fall like the dead leaves in autumn into the outer darkness, or like the rain that comes upon the hungry sea, and is lost for ever. And this is going on perpetually — hour hy hour, moment hy moment, and not only outside the one visible Church of God, in which alone is salvation, but in the Church itself; among those who are baptised and illuminated by the faith, and Catholic in name, among them, too, souls are dying in multitudes who may never see God, never enter into eternal life. Multitudes, so far as man sees, are being lost. Look at this great city where we are. Of the deaths that are recorded week by week, I ask you how many of these die with the last sacraments? how many of them die with acts of contrition? how many may we believe in the last day will stand on the right hand of the Judge? And this is going on perpetually, day and night. It is so easy for men to be lost. Look back only on your own life. It has been perhaps chequered all along alternately with states of sin and states of grace. There have been, I daresay, in the lives of most of us, ten times, ay, and with some a hundred times, in which if Almighty God had cut us off, we must have died eternally. There have been seasons in our life — sometimes for a whole year together, sometimes

G more; for three, four, six, eight, yes, and ten years it may be — when we were living in a state of mortal sin. If Almighty God had cut us off at any moment at that time, where should we have been eternally? Salvation would have been impossible. It may be there have been seasons of mortal sin only for a day, in which, if God had cut us off before the sun went down, salvation would have been impossible to all eternity. How great, then, may be the multitude of the lost! Beyond all the count the human heart can conceive are those who may die out of the state of grace. What, then, is the love of souls but this? — a thirsting desire to go to and fro, beseeching and inviting, and warning and praying men to take heed to their eternal salvation, lest at any time the day should come as a thief in the night and find them unprepared, in mortal sin, and therefore out of the grace of life eternal. Look, then, round about you in this great city; and is there one of us who believes in the worth of the soul, or the love of God, or the danger of being lost, or the multitudes that are lost, that can fail to feel upon his conscience the heavy weight, which St. Vincent called 'his burden and grief,' that is, the sins and miseries of souls?

5. There is still one motive of which I would speak; that is, the glory and bliss of the soul that is saved — the eternal joy of the soul that enters into the beatific vision, illuminated with a knowledge of God, and inflamed with a love of God, and so is united by vision and by union to the ever-blessed Trinity to all eternity. Can the heart of man conceive, ever so imperfectly, such bliss as this, and yet be cold, as we are cold? Is it not rather that we hardly conceive it at all? Would it be possible to conceive it, however little, and not be set on fire so as to thirst for souls and for salvation? Would it be possible for men who felt this to commit a sin with their eyes open, or to be tame, lukewarm, irresolute, and undecided in their will. Think also of the joy of those who shall enter into the eternal home, where they shall find once more all whom they have loved, kindred and friends, all bonds of life transfigured, all eternal in the everlasting house of our heavenly Father; in the presence of Jesus, and of all His Saints, who have loved them while on earth, and prayed for them, and in the charity of the heavenly court have thirsted for their salvation while they were in peril in the world. Into such a bliss every soul whom you bring to the knowledge of Jesus, and to the sacraments of salvation, shall enter when it passes hence. Is it, then, possible, if men are governed by motives, and if the strongest motives govern men most strongly, that we can count anything of worth compared with winning one soul to eternal life?

This, then, is what governed the life of St. Vincent. This is the explanation of the long life of eighty and five years spent in ceaseless toil. Ask for one spark of this sacred fire. Pray that you may have it but a little; for to have it in his measure is more than we dare to ask. He was a Saint of God, and we are but sinners. Let us ask of God just such a spark of this fire of charity as poor sinners may ask to have.

And now I will but add a few short words before I end.

We have already seen what was the social and religious state of France when St. Vincent arose to do his work; how it was corrupt both spiritually and morally; how all classes of society were torn asunder >and set in opposition; and how one source of that •corruption was the secularity and the weakness of the Church in France, through the power and the despotism of the state; how the civil power had bound the Church hand and foot, so as to hinder its -vigorous and saving action upon the souls of the people. It was its jealousy against the Holy See which inspired the state and the monarchy of France to bind the Gallican Church by bonds which are miscalled liberties, but were truly servitudes and slaveries. By separating it from the Holy See, as far as possible without the breach of external unity, the civil power enslaved the Church in France. It could not do its work with power, because it could not do it with freedom. Its spiritual action upon the people grew feebler and feebler from generation to generation. And it was in such a state of society, as we have seen, that St. Vincent arose. His first work was to tell the rich that they who possessed wealth and power in this world will have to give account before the judgment -seat of Almighty God for every soul that through their neglect should die without the knowledge of Christ. He told them that their money was given them as a stewardship; that if souls died round about them in ignorance of the faith, they would have to answer for the use and application of the means which God had intrusted to them. He admonished the noble family in which he lived of the duty of teaching the peasants who tended their herds and tilled their soil. He began as our Lord did, facere ct docere, both to do and to teach. He propagated throughout France the sense of responsibility in the rich. Next, he taught the poor that to know

God is an inheritance far better and greater than the good things of this world; he made both rich and poor to be Christians, and so he brought them together. In this way he began to redress the miseries and inequalities of society. He then taught them to see that the inequalities between classes are merely accidental; that there is an essential equality — a unity between all those for whom Jesus died, and that one soul is as precious in the sight of God as another. Perhaps it may be found that the soul of the poor man is more precious in the sight of God than the soul of the rich, because more adorned with the graces of humility and poverty of spirit, of meekness and of gentleness. He taught men the true value of man by teaching the true value of souls, which are to be estimated not by the light of the world, nor the maxims of the world, but by the light which falls from the eternal presence and the judgment - seat of God. The sentence which shall be passed at the last day, is the only measure which cannot mislead. He thus penetrated the whole of society by the extraordinary activity of his life. He quickened it with every form and ministry of mercy, by the Fathers of the Mission, and the Sisters of Charity, and the seven congregations of religious wo-men whom he either formed or organised. In every diocese there was a diocesan congregation; in every parish there was a parochial confraternity of laymen united together to labour for souls. The spirit of charity went through the whole body and structure of society, organising it as it spread, and by its organisation and its unity of action becoming more and more efficient and lasting.

This, then, was St. Vincent's work in life; and, as I said to you the other day, Almighty God was preparing two great revolutions for France; one of charity, and another of chastisement. The revolution of charity in His mercy came first as a prelude. The revolution of chastisement came afterwards, tardily, but justly, as a punishment. A hundred years passed away before the revolution of chastisement came. If the revolution of charity, that true and only reformation, which springs from the love of God and our neighbour, had taken effect, and brought France back again to filial submission to the Holy See, and to Catholic generosity in the works and fruits of love; if the Catholic society of France had been pervaded and matured by the spirit of supernatural charity, the baptisms of blood, in which France has been immersed in a series of political revolutions, might have been averted.

Let me apply this in like manner to England.

What we call Christendom — the Christian society of Europe — was the work and creation of the Christian Church. For fifteen hundred years the social life of England was an integral part of the Christian and Catholic world. Three hundred years ago it revolted. Of its own perverse will it chose to found itself upon the order of nature; upon the power and wisdom of legislation; upon the skill of statesmen; and to derive its social well-being, not from the Church of God, hut from the natural endowments of society itself. It professed to find the fountain of its own well - being within its own limits; and the statesmen of England have been intoxicated by the material splendour and prosperity of its great commercial empire, and believe at this moment that they are redressing what are called social evils, and that they are about to make the society of England peaceful, prosperous, and religious, by the action of human prudence, natural benevolence, and the like. I would to God that I may be altogether deceived; but if I am convinced of any truth, it is this, that for the last three hundred years England has been gradually departing farther and farther from the love and from the faith of Jesus Christ, from the spirit and life of Christendom, and has been immersing itself more and more profoundly in the spirit of this proud world, the friendship of which is enmity against God. After this I see but one result; that the revolution of chastisement, which, sooner or later, falls upon every nation which has separated itself from the unity of the Church of God, will, in the end, fall upon England, Whether in your day or mine, I cannot say; how many generations hence, I cannot tell; but as it needs no spirit of prophecy to foretell the results of axioms and self-evident laws, so we need no more than to appreciate the principles which now govern England both in politics and religion, to foretell its future.

Look, first, at the condition of the classes of England; the separation of the rich from the poor; at the unequal distribution of wealth; at the unwieldy miseries and irremediable distresses of our millions. Private charity is exhausted; public relief breaks down; and pauperism and hunger gain head against all we do. We were told the other day, that every week one person at least dies of actual starvation in London. Whether that be so or not, I cannot tell; it is a statement put forward by those who ought to know. With all our wealth and skill and pride of government, the political powers of the world are incapable of redressing evils such as these, which are the degradations of barbarism, not the maladies of Christian society. There is only one power that can redress these social evils, that is, the supernatural power of charity. There is nothing for us but the revolution of charity — the action of God — the return of God and His kingdom into this land, that can preserve us from the scourge which threatens us now.

And who can accomplish this revolution of charity? Only one power, which England has despised for three hundred years — against which, at this moment, it is warring with all its might. Has the Established Church of England the power to redress the mise-ries and the evils which afflict the population of this country? Not one-half of the people, even in name, profess to belong to it; and the other half are torn and distracted, divided and subdivided, by every form of religious dissent, perpetually widening farther and farther asunder. Is the power of charity and religion working upon the masses of the population so as to penetrate them? Is it uniting them together? Keligion in England is the very wedge of division — that which is splitting society in England asunder, is religious controversy. There is nothing, then, to be found in the established religion, and much less in the dissenting religions of England, which can check the development of the evils we see before us. What power can do so? Only that one so long despised. Charity is no abstraction. It has its presence and its form on earth. It was first organised in the Catholic Church on the day of Pentecost, and has wrought throughout the world from that day to this. It has borne its fruits in a thousand Saints like Vincent of Paul, and contains in itself the ever-fresh and inexhaustible vigour of its youth in every land and age. In this country, after three hundred years of martyrdom and of penal laws, it has been again restored to its form and dignity. It is clothed once more in the hierarchy, which the undying See of Peter restored to England ten years ago. The whole land rose up in tumult against it, and confessed its supernatural presence by a strange enmity and fear. But just as France was organised by the charity and zeal of Vincent and his companions, who spread all over France a network, as it were, of charities, so the one only power which can ever reunite the classes of England in bonds of mutual submission and benevolence, is the universal action of the same supernatural charity which springs from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and is applied by the equal operation and the divine unity of the Church of God.

And of this we seem to see the preludes. The Church is restoring and marshalling its Orders and its Congregations. The Saints are sending their sons into England. They are taking up their positions like the columns of an army of occupation. Even the laity of the Catholic Church are uniting themselves together, as in these Conferences, which cover the whole of London, and act with a perfect unity of operation in every place.

This is the point with which I wish to end: multiply your numbers. Every parish in London may be divided into those who are so poor as to need alms, or those who, being removed above the poor, are able to give alms. Every man who is above that line, that water-mark, ought to be a brother of St. Vincent. First, multiply the members of your Conferences, and then mark down all the kinds and all the forms of misery— such as want, ignorance, and poverty, and sin — around you. Do as St. Vincent did; mark down the evils, and Almighty God will give you the mind and the strength to find the remedies. The first thing is to make a map of our miseries, and then to find a coextensive remedy, by the organisation of charity, which shall spread over the whole field of the sufferings and sins of our people. Do you say that this is a great work? Almighty God, who made the world and became incarnate, can do all things. This mighty mass of population in London is not so weighty, but that He can balance it in the hollow of His hand. He can convert it by one inspiration of His grace, and make it like unto the city of Nineveh, a city of penance unto salvation. Let us therefore have confidence; and let us bear in mind this truth, that on the bed of death, and in the day of judgment, to have saved one soul will be not only better than to have won a kingdom, but will over-pay, by an exceeding great reward, all the pains and toils of the longest and most toilsome life.