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VEXILLA REGIS
VEXILLA REGIS
uotitue
L B. S.
BOSTON
batety JDri
MDCCCXCIII
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j
CONTENTS
ANUARY
God's Appointments Plain
Music
Compassion ....
A Cluster of Graces
FEBRUARY
Intercession
Bearing the Cross
Simplicity.
Man's Judgments .
MARCH
Warfare ....
The Wrath of Man
God's Love for Individuals
Woman. The Virgin .
APRIL
The Heathen .
Grief for the Loss of One
Reunion ....
Self-Sacrifice ....
MAY
Solitude ....
Society
God Alone Enough for Us
Knowing God
JUNE
Doubts ....
Faith
Perfection through Suffering
Knowledge from Obedience .
JULY
Freedom . . . , . . . .82
Liberty . . , . ' . . '. . 85
Intellect. Genius . . yj'; * .88
Aspects of Sin . . < . , . . 91
AUGUST
Animals . . . . * . . .96
The Sea . . . , : . > . 100
Mysticism . . .... .V, .... . 103
Rich and Poor . r . ' ', . ; 106
SEPTEMBER
Old Age . . . ... ,> .. - . .113
Skepticism .... 116
Childlike Obedience . . . ' . .119
Mystery. . . , v . .v r "^V v 122
OCTOBER
Entering into the Labors of Others ^-^ . 126
Time ^ 129
Good Stronger than Evil . . . . . 132
Punishment . . ^ - . ; . . 3 . 134
NOVEMBER
Atonement . ... . . . . 140
Tides of the Soul . f .' . . d 143
Fate . ........ . .146
Sad World . . . ; . .149
DECEMBER
Peace - ^ . ^ = . 154
Love to God and Man 1 57
The Power of Faith and Love . 160
Repentance, Aspiration, Mercy . J 9 , 164
FOR THE MONTH OF
JANUARY
Appointments Plain
TN the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and
made me a polished shaft ; in his quiver hath
he hid me. ISAIAH xlix. 2.
But let patience have her perfect work.
s. JAMES i. 4.
Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee
a crown of life. REVELATION ii. 10.
II And so in Cordova through patient nights
Columbus watches, or he sails in dreams
Between the setting stars and finds new day ;
Then wakes again to the old weary days,
Girds on the cord and frock of pale Saint Francis,
And like him zealous pleads with foolish men.
" I ask but for a million maravedis ;
Give me three caravels to find a world,
New shores, new realms, new soldiers for the Cross
Son cosas grandes ! " Thus he pleads in vain ;
Yet faints not utterly, but pleads anew,
Thinking, " God means it, and has chosen me."
GEORGE ELIOT.
JANUARY
ill We are all of us like the weavers of the Gobe-
lins, who, following out the pattern of an
unknown artist, endeavor to match the threads of
divers colors on the wrong side of the woof, and
do not see the result of their labor. It is only
when the texture is complete, that they can admire
at their ease these lovely flowers and figures, those
splendid pictures worthy of the palaces of kings.
So it is with us, my friends : we work, we suffer, and
v/e see neither the end nor the fruit. But God sees
it; and when He releases us from our task, He will
disclose to our wondering gaze what He, the great
Artist, everywhere present and invisible, has woven
out of those toils that now seem to us so sterile, and
He will then deign to hang up in His palace of gold
the flimsy web that we have spun. F. OZANAM.
|jj It is God who prepares men when He intends
to use them, and who gives them just what they
require for their work, and that by a marvelous suc-
cession of events, the connection of which can only
be seen when we examine the whole chain. As I
glance over my own life, from whatever side I view
it I see it all converging to the point where I now
stand. LACORDAIRE.
j) No sane man at last distrusts himself. His
existence is a perfect answer to all sentimental
cavils. If he is, he is wanted and has the precise
properties that are required. That we are here is
proof we ought to be here. EMERSON.
2
JANUARY
Patience is the part
Of all whom Time records among the great,
The only gift I know, the only art,
To strengthen up our frailties to our fate.
T. PARSONS.
jj| I try as much as I can to let nothing distress
me, and to take everything that happens as for
the best. I believe that this is a duty, and that we
sin in not doing so. For, in short, the reason why
sins are sins is only because they are contrary to
the will of God ; and the essence of sin thus con-
sisting in having a will opposed to that which we
know to be of God, it is plain, it appears to me,
that when He discovers His will to us by events,
it would be a sin not to conform ourselves to it.
PASCAL.
Jjtl When the soul has reached a certain degree of
elevation towards God, she easily despises life,
and then it is that God binds her to life once more
by the ties of duty. Life is a very important busi-
ness, though often enough we do not see its utility.
Drops of water as we are, we ask what the ocean
can want with us, and the ocean might reply that it
is made up of such drops. LACORDAIRE.
In life's small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscle trained : know'st thou when
Fate
Thy measure takes, or when she '11 say to thee,
" I find thee worthy ; do this deed for me " ?
LOWELL.
JANUARY
JRttffe
tJUt Jubal : he was the father of all such as han-
dle the harp and organ. GENESIS iv. 21.
David took an harp, and played with his hand :
so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil
spirit departed from him. i SAMUEL xvi. 23.
j You do not perhaps know that Music was among
the Greeks quite the first means of education ;
and that it was so connected with their system of
ethics and of intellectual training, that the God of
Music is with them also the God of Righteousness ;
the God who purges and avenges iniquity, and con-
tends with their Satan as represented under the form
of Python, " the corrupter." And the Greeks were
incontrovertibly right in this. Music is the nearest
at hand, the most orderly, the most delicate, of all
bodily pleasures ; it is also the only one which is
equally helpful to all the ages of man, helpful
from the nurse's song to her infant, to the music,
unheard of others, which often, if not most fre-
quently, haunts the death-bed of pure and innocent
spirits. RUSKIN.
I have not long to trouble thee. Good Griffith,
Cause the musicians play me that sad note
I named my knell, whilst I sit meditating
On that celestial harmony I go to.
SHAKESPEARE.
4
JANUARY
jft Oh ! silence that clarion in mercy
For it carries my soul away ;
And it whirls my thoughts out beyond me,
Like the leaves on an autumn day.
Oh ! exquisite tyranny silence
My soul slips from under my hand,
And as if by instinct is fleeing
To a dread unvisited land.
Thou Lord art the Father of music ;
Sweet sounds are a whisper from Thee ;
Thou hast made Thy creation all anthems,
Though it singeth them silently.
FABER.
11 Music : is it not to tender and poetic souls,
to wounded and suffering hearts a text which
they interpret as their memories need? If the
heart of a poet must be given to a musician, must
not poetry and love be listeners ere the great musical
works of art are understood ? Religion, love, and
music : are they not the triple expression of the fact
the need of expansion, the need of touching with
their own infinite the infinite beyond them, which
is in the fibre of all noble souls ? These three forms
of poesy end in God, who alone can unwind the
knot of earthly emotion. Thus this holy human
trinity joins itself to the holiness of God, of whom
we make to ourselves no conception unless we
surround Him by the fires of love and the golden
cymbals of music and light and harmony. BALZAC.
5
JANUARY
Music is an outward and earthly economy,
under which great wonders are typified: To
many men the very names which the science employs
are utterly incomprehensible. To speak of an idea
or a subject seems to be fanciful or trifling, to speak
of the views it opens upon us, to be childish extrava-
gance ; yet is it possible that that inexhaustible evo-
lution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple,
so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majes-
tic, should be a mere sound, that those mysterious
stirrings of the heart, and keen emotions, and
strange yearnings after we know not what, and
awful impressions from we know not whence, should
be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and
comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself?
It is not so, it cannot be. No, they have escaped
from some higher sphere, they are the outpouring
of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound ;
they are echoes from our Home, they are the voice
of angels, or the Magnificat of saints, or the living
laws of Divine Governance, or the Divine Attri-
butes something are they besides themselves,
which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter,
though mortal man has the gift of eliciting them.
CARDINAL NEWMAN.
jftfo Till David touched his sacred lyre
In silence lay the unbreathing wire,
But when he swept its chords along,
The angels stooped to hear the song.
So sleeps the soul till thou, O Lord,
Shalt deign to touch its lifeless chord ;
6
JANUARY
Till, waked by Thee, its breath shall rise
In music worthy of the skies.
MOORE.
Companion
]J) His compassions fail not.
LAMENTATIONS iii. 22.
Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of
another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous.
I PETER iii. 8.
J)j To mercy, pity, peace, and love
All pray in their distress,
And to those virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy has a human heart ;
Pity, a human face ;
And Love, the human form divine ;
And Peace, the human dress.
WILLIAM BLAKE.
Perhaps here lay the secret of the hardness
he had accused himself of : he had too little
fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite
of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feel-
ing how are we to get enough patience and charity
toward our stumbling, falling companions in the
long and changeful journey? And there is but
one way in which a strong determined soul can
7
JANUARY
learn it by getting his heartstrings bound round
the weak and erring, so that he must share not only
the outward consequence of their error, but their
inward suffering. GEORGE ELIOT.
jfyfti If the heart be right with God, He will
weigh the rest in a balance of compassion.
CARDINAL MANNING.
jft If only dear to God the strong
That never trip nor wander,
Where were the throng whose morning song
Thrills His blue arches yonder ?
LOWELL.
jpj? Clear images before your gladdened eyes
Of nature's unambitious underwood
And flowers that prosper in the shade. And when
I speak of such among the flock as swerved
Or fell, those only shall be singled out
Upon whose lapse or error something more
Than brotherly forgiveness may attend.
WORDSWORTH.
| Breathe for his wandering soul one passing
sigh,
O happier Christian, while thine eye grows dim,
In all the mansions of the house on high
Say not that Mercy has not one for him.
o. w. HOLMES.
8
JANUARY
21 Cluster of (Braces
Add to your faith virtue; and to virtue
knowledge; and to knowledge temperance;
and to temperance patience ; and to patience god-
liness ; and to godliness brotherly kindness ; and
to brotherly kindness charity.
II PETER i. 5, 6, 7.
Therefore it behooves you to give yourself
up to Him in perfect confidence, and so to
fulfil all your duties towards God or man, as freely
and fully as if you had the most vivid conscious-
ness of that upholding grace, and that because
faith gives us so much more certain assurance than
even our own sense and experience can give. I
would far rather know by God's own promise that
His help is ever present, and that He wills me to
live by His Holy Spirit and be led by His grace,
than merely to feel it to be so ; and realize His
guiding Hand by my own consciousness. My own
feeling and experience might be deceived and
might mislead me, but God is infallible, and where
He speaks, our reason and senses have no further
claim to be heard. PERE DE CONDREN.
The virtue of prosperity is temperance, the
virtue of adversity is fortitude. Prosperity
is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is
the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater
benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's
favor. BACON.
9
JANUARY
jj The more we know the less narrow are our
minds. Our sphere of vision is increased.
Our horizon is wider. We appreciate the manifold
varieties of grace and of vocations. We see how
God's glory finds its account in almost infinite di-
versity, and how holiness can be at home in oppo-
sites, nay, how what is wrong in this man is accept-
able, perhaps heroic, in that other man. Hence, we
free ourselves from little jealousies, from unchari-
table doubts, from unworthy suspicions, from nar-
row criticisms, things which are the especial dis-
eases of little great men and little good men, and
which may be said to frustrate one third, if not
more, of all the good works which are attempted in
the Church. Goodness which is not greatness also
is a sad misfortune. While it saves its own soul
it will not let others save theirs. Especially does
it contrive, in proportion to its influence, to put a
spoke in the wheel of all progress, and has almost
a talent for interfering with the salvation of souls.
Now, if reading did no more than abate the viru-
lence of any one of the diseases mentioned above,
would it not be a huge work ? FABER.
Mother, I implore you do not be terrified, or
arrested in your task, by the wilderness of
knowledges which seem requisite. One may choose
from all these the true points, few but fruitful, dif-
ficult doubtless to many minds, but to you, mo-
ther, whose mind seems new to me every day, and
whose soul, whether from the advance of years,
or whether from its wondrous temperance, wholly
10
JANUARY
freed from the deceptions of the world and from
the hard servitude of the senses, has power to grow
and rise mightily within itself to you, beloved
mother, these things will be as easy as they would
be hard to the sluggish understanding of all those
souls who live so miserably. s. AUGUSTINE.
jtf)ti Angel of Patience ! sent to calm
Our feverish brows with cooling palm ;
To lay the storms of hope and fear,
And reconcile life's smile and tear;
The throbs of wounded pride to still
And make our own our Father's will !
O thou who mournest on thy way,
With longings for the close of day,
He walks with thee, that Angel kind,
And gently whispers, " Be resigned :
Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell
The dear Lord ordereth all things well ! "
FROM GERMAN BY WHITTIER.
So far as I can see I am not under the
sway of any strong attachment to any cre-
ated thing, not even to all the bliss of Heaven, but
only to the love of God ; and this does not grow less
on the contrary, I believe it is growing together with
the longing that all men may serve Him. ... I am
at peace within, and my likings and dislikings have
so little power to take from me the Presence of the
Three Persons of which, while it continues, it is so
impossible to doubt, that I seem clearly to know
II
JANUARY
by experience what is recorded by St. John, that
God will make His dwelling in the soul, and not
only by grace, but because He will have the soul
feel that presence. s. THERESA.
j The kingdom of established peace
Which can no more remove,
The perfect powers of godliness,
The omnipotence of love.
C. WESLEY.
) God is not satisfied with words and thoughts,
my sisters. He requires effects and actions.
If, therefore, you see a sick person whom you can in
any way relieve, leave your devotions courageously
to do so. Have compassion for what she suffers,
and let her suffering be as your own. The love of
God does not consist in shedding tears, nor in that
satisfaction and tenderness which we ordinarily de-
sire because they are consoling : it consists in serv-
ing God with courage, in acting justly, in practising
humility. s. THERESA.
Jtffi We are daily tempted and solicited into rash
and self-fettering judgments. . . . When we
have once judged a man, we have, as it were, closed
his access to us at all unexpected avenues. We are
pledged to one view of him ; he is no more an infi-
nite possibility to us ; we have measured him, cal-
culated our expectations from him, and never more
can look to him with the freshness and reverence
of an undefined hope. A man that will do this
12
JANUARY
towards a child has closed his heart against much
that might enrich it. A sage will listen with an
interest approaching to awe to the revelations of a
child's heart. He is often judged by it, but judges
not that pure, infinite, mysterious depth. And so
should it be, as far as possible, with every human
spirit. Why should we be asked to try it with our
measuring-lines ? to say how deep or how shallow
it is ? Why should we not keep the privilege of
Hope, which is so very near to Charity.
DR. J. H. THOM.
13
FOR THE MONTH OF
FEBRUARY
A ND he said unto me, Fear not, Daniel; for
from the first day that thou didst set thine
heart to understand and to chasten thyself before
thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for
thy words. DANIEL x. 12.
This kind can come forth by nothing but by
prayer and-fasting. s. MARK ix. 29.
Praying always with all prayer and supplication
in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all per-
severance and supplication for all saints.
EPHESIANS vi. 1 8.
II It is observable, that though prayer for self is
the first and plainest of Christian duties, the
Apostles especially insist on another kind of prayer:
prayer for others, for ourselves with others, for the
Church, and for the world, that it may be brought
into the Church. Intercession is the characteristic
of Christian worship, the privilege of the heavenly
adoption, the exercise of the perfect and spiritual
mind. . . . Why should we be unwilling to admit
FEBRUARY
what it is so great a consolation to know ? Surely
Christ did not die for any common end, but in order
to exalt man, who was of the dust of the field, into
"heavenly places." . . . He died to bestow upon
him that privilege which implies or involves all
others, and brings him into nearest resemblance to
Himself, the privilege of intercession.
CARDINAL NEWMAN.
i\i Place yourselves in the presence of Christ, and
without fatiguing the understanding converse
with Him, and in Him rejoice, without wearying
yourselves in searching out reasons ; for there is no
soul so great a giant on this road, but has frequent
need to turn back and be again an infant at the
breast. . . . The knowledge of our sins and of our
own selves is the bread which we have to eat with
all the meats, however delicate they may be in the
way of prayer. s. THERESA.
j{j Through the black night, and driving rain,
A ship is struggling all in vain
To live upon the stormy main.
Miserere Domine.
Cowering among his pillows white,
A child, his blue eyes dim with fright,
Prays, " God save those at sea to-night."
Miserere Domine.
The morning shone all clear and gay
On a ship at anchor in the bay
15
FEBRUARY
And on a little child at play.
Gloria tibi Domine.
A. PROCTER.
j) More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy
voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend ?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
TENNYSON.
f)l Never forget, when you begin to pray, that you
are entering God's Presence, for two main rea-
sons : first, to pay Him the honor and homage due
to Him ; which may be rendered without the utter-
ance of a word on either side. . . . The second rea-
son which takes us into God's Presence is, that we
may talk with Him, and hear Him speaking within
our hearts by His Gracious Inspirations. This is
usually a most intense enjoyment ; it is a great privi-
lege to speak familiarly with our Dear Lord, and
when He speaks to us, He sheds an abundance of
His precious balm and sweetness upon the soul. If
we are able to speak to our Lord, let us do so,
let us praise, pray, and hearken ; if our utterance is
hindered, let us, nevertheless, remain bowed down
before Him; He will behold us; He will accept
16
FEBRUARY
our patient waiting, and look graciously upon our
silence ; it may be He will amaze us by leading us
by the hand and bringing us into His realm of
prayer. s. FRANCIS DE SALES.
foil O dull of heart ! enclosed doth lie
In each " Come Lord " an " Here am I."
Thy love, thy longing are not thine,
Reflections of a love divine :
Thy very prayer to thee was given,
Itself a messenger from Heaven.
ARCHBP. TRENCH.
Seating t&e Cross
Whosoever will come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross, and follow
me. s. MARK viii. 34.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is
not worthy of me. s. MATTHEW x. 37.
l And there is meaning in Christ's words. What-
ever misuse may have been made of them
whatever false prophets and Heaven knows there
have been many have called the young children
to them not to bless, but to curse, the assured fact
remains, that if you will obey God, there will come
a moment when the voice of man will be raised,
with all its holiest natural authority, against you.
The friend and the wise adviser the brother and
the sister the father and the master the entire
17
FEBRUARY
voice of your prudent and keen-sighted acquaint-
ance the entire weight of the scornful stupidity
of the vulgar world for once, they will be against
you all at one. You have to obey God rather than
man. The human race, with all its wisdom and
love, all its indignation and folly, on one side ;
God alone on the other. You have to choose.
RUSKIN.
The man who gives himself to other men can
never be a wholly sad man ; but no more can
he be a man of unclouded gladness. To him shall
come with every consecration a before untasted joy,
but in the same cup shall be mixed a sorrow that it
was beyond his power to feel before. They who
long to sit with Jesus on His throne may sit there
if the Father sees them pure and worthy, but they
must be baptized with the baptism that He is bap-
tized with. All truly consecrated men learn little
by little that what they are consecrated to is not
joy or sorrow, but a divine idea and a profound
obedience, which can find their full outward expres-
sion, not in joy, and not in sorrow, but in the mys-
terious and inseparable mingling of the two.
BISHOP BROOKS.
PI Dispose and order all things according to thy
will and judgment ; yet thou shalt ever find that
of necessity thou must suffer somewhat, either will-
ingly or against thy will, and so thou shalt ever find
the Cross.
18
FEBRUARY
For either thou shalt feel pain in thy body, or in
thy soul thou shalt suffer tribulation of spirit.
A KEMPIS.
U Joan of Arc wept when the saints and angels
left her. However beautiful and glorious her
visions were, her life from that time had changed.
She who had heard till then only one voice, that of
her mother, of which her own was the echo, heard
now the powerful voice of angels. And what did
the celestial voice wish ? That she should leave
that mother, that quiet home. She must quit for
the world, for war, that little garden under the
shadow of the church where she heard only its mu-
sical bells, and where the birds ate from her hand.
The two authorities, earthly and heavenly, com-
manded different things. One or the other she
must disobey. This was without doubt her greatest
struggle. Those she maintained against the Eng-
lish were child's play in comparison. MICHELET.
fill Particular devotion to God's service infallibly
entails contradiction, calumny, injustice, and
various trials from creatures ; and that not only
from the wicked, but even from the virtuous, or, at
least, those reputed such. JEAN NICHOLAS GROU.
pljj Thus everywhere we find our suffering God,
And where He trod
May set our steps : the Cross on Calvary
Uplifted high
19
FEBRUARY
Beams on the martyr host, a beacon light
In open fight.
Mortal, if life smile on thee, and thou find
All to thy mind,
Think, who did once from Heaven to Hell descend
Thee to befriend :
So, shalt thou dare forego at His dear call,
Thy best, thine all.
J. KEBLE.
Simplicity
yjj Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eye-
lids look straight before thee.
PROVERBS IV. 25.
The Lord preserveth the simple.
PSALM cxvi. 6.
tjt By two wings a man is lifted up from things
earthly; namely, by Simplicity and Purity.
Simplicity ought to be in our intention, Purity in
our affection. Simplicity doth tend toward God ;
Purity doth apprehend and, as it were, taste Him.
There is no creature so poor and abject, that it
representeth not the goodness of God. If thou
wert inwardly good and pure, then wouldst thou be
able to see and understand all things well without
impediment.
A pure heart penetrateth Heaven and Hell.
A KEMPIS.
20
FEBRUARY
tfott Unfortunately, untruthfulness is the com-
monest of all miseries. It is as universal as
the consequences of the fall. A truthful man is the
rarest of all phenomena. Perhaps hardly any of
us have ever seen one. Thorough truthfulness
is undoubtedly the most infrequent of all graces.
The grace of terrific austerities and bodily macera-
tions which has characterized some of the saints,
the grace to love suffering, the grace of ecstasy, the
grace of martyrdom all these are commoner graces
than that of thorough truthfulness. FABER.
Not his the golden pen's or lip's persuasion,
But a fine sense of right,
And Truth's directness, meeting each occasion
Straight as a line of light.
His faith and works, like streams that intermingle,
In the same channel ran :
The crystal clearness of an eye kept single
Shamed all the frauds of man.
WHITTIER.
| For never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it.
SHAKESPEARE.
fP Tell the dear Marie to speak freely of God
wherever she thinks it will be useful, regardless
of what those who listen may think or say of her.
In a word, I have already told her that while we
ought neither to do nor say anything in order to
21
FEBRUARY
obtain praise, no more ought we to leave anything
undone or unsaid because we may be praised for
it. Nor is it hypocritical to act less perfectly than
we talk ; of a truth, were it so, we should all be in
a bad plight. In that case I must be silent for
fear of being a hypocrite, since if I speak concern-
ing perfection it follows that I count myself
perfect. ... It is not good to be so punctilious,
nor to distract oneself with so many little questions
which do not concern the things of our Lord.
Tell her to go on sincerely, holding fast to simplicity
and humility, and to cast aside all these subtleties
and perplexities. s. FRANCIS DE SALES.
ffil Simplicity is an uprightness of soul which
checks all useless dwelling upon one's self and
one's actions. It is different from sincerity, which
is a much lower virtue. We see many people who
are sincere without being simple ; they are always
thinking about themselves, weighing all their words
and thoughts. . . . Dwelling too much upon self
produces in weak minds useless scruples and su-
perstition, and in stronger minds a presumptuous
wisdom which is incompatible with the spirit of
God. Both are contrary to true simplicity, which
is free and direct, and gives itself up to God with-
out reserve, and with a generous self-forgetfulness.
How free, how intrepid are the motions, how
glorious the progress, that the soul makes when
delivered from all low and interested and unquiet
cares ! FENELON.
22
FEBRUARY
J uc ^ge not, that ye be not judged.
S. MATTHEW vii. I.
Who art thou that judgest another man's servant ?
to his own master he standeth or falleth.
ROMANS xiv. 4.
We see only a part of each other, but God
sees all. Our partial view is, if not mingled
with untruth, yet misleading, because imperfect;
we only know half the riddle, and we are led astray
in guessing at the rest. " But all things are naked
and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we
have to do." CARDINAL MANNING.
Even if the justice of an unfavorable judg-
ment was absolutely certain, one might sup-
pose that all earnest and gentle natures, under no
necessity of duty, would recoil from giving it form,
from lodging it in the minds of others, from shaping
a bad reputation for another with their own lips,
and giving it currency with the intent of their hearts.
But when we reflect on the uncertainty of all such
judgments, on the profound mystery that attaches
to every man, on the hidden depths, the latent work-
ings, the possibilities unknown of every human
spirit, the presumption that volunteers a judgment,
as though that solemn and inscrutable nature was
a mere transparency, ought to repel and shock us,
as partaking of profaneness and impiety.
DR. J. H. THOM.
23
FEBRUARY
]JJ O God, whose thoughts are brightest light,
Whose love always runs clear,
To whose kind wisdom sinning souls
Amidst their sins are dear,
Thou art the Unapproached, whose height
Enables Thee to stoop,
Whose holiness bends undefiled
To handle hearts that droop.
When we ourselves least kindly are,
We deem the world unkind ;
Dark hearts, in flowers where honey lies,
Only the poison find.
FABER.
Jtpfoi The way of God, who does all things gently,
is to put religion into the mind by reason,
and into the heart by grace. . . . Begin by pitying
the unbeliever ; he is already wretched enough.
PASCAL.
J#fatt Judge not ; the workings of his brain
And of his heart thou canst not see.
What looks to thy dim eyes a stain,
In God's pure light may only be
A scar, brought from some well-won field
Where thou wouldst only faint and yield.
The look, the air that frets thy sight
May be a token, that below
The soul has closed in deadly fight
24
FEBRUARY
With some infernal, fiery foe,
Whose glance would scorch thy smiling grace
And cast thee shuddering on thy face.
A. PROCTER.
FPtUti Probably the majority of repentances have
begun in the reception of acts of kindness,
which, if not unexpected, touched men by the sense
of their being so undeserved. . . . Doubtless the
terrors of the Lord are often the beginning of that
wisdom which we name conversion ; but men must
be frightened in a kind way, or the fright will only
make them unbelievers. Kindness has converted
more sinners than either zeal or eloquence or learn-
ing ; and these last three have never converted any
one, unless they were kind also. ... A kind act
has picked up many a fallen man who has after-
wards slain his tens of thousands for his Lord, and
has entered the Heavenly City at last as a con-
queror, amidst the acclamations of the saints, and
with the welcome of his Sovereign. FABER.
Wif Some purest water still the wine may hold.
Is there no hope for her no power to save ?
Yea, once again to draw up from the clay
The fallen dewdrop till it shine above
Or save a fallen soul needs but one ray
Of Heaven's sunshine or of human love.
VICTOR HUGO.
25
FOR THE MONTH OF
MARCH
GSEarfate
TXT'E were troubled on every side ; without were
fightings, within were fears.
II CORINTHIANS vii. 5.
Fight the good fight of faith. i TIMOTHY vi. 12.
I have fought a good fight, I have finished my
course, I have kept the faith. 11 TIMOTHY iv. 7.
li Dear to us are those who love us ; the swift
moments we spend with them are a compensa-
tion for a great deal of misery; but dearer are
those who reject us as unworthy, for they add an-
other life : they build a heaven before us whereof
we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new
powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge
us to new and unattempted performances.
EMERSON.
Ill Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil ? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave ?
26
MARCH
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave,
In silence ripen, fall and cease :
Give us long rest or death, dark death or dreamful
ease ! TENNYSON.
ft) Does the road wind up hill all the way ?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day ?
From morn to night ', my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place ?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin ?
May not the darkness hide it from my face ?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night ?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock or call when just in sight ?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak ?
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek ?
Yea, beds for all who come.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
|) There are, it may be, some men so constituted
that they turn naturally to the right course ;
they take intuitively the healthy view of circum-
stance ; God's Spirit finds so little resistance in
their nature that they take it for their own ; their
spontaneous affections are in unconscious harmony
27
MARCH
with the ulterior designs of His Providence. But
these are the exceptions, and rather good than great,
rather saints than heroes. Most men accomplish
the " end for which they were born, the cause for
which they came into the world," not by their spon-
taneous affections, but by the high strain of Con-
science by calling in the force of Principle and
Will : God's Spirit strives with theirs : only through
deliberate resolve do they choose the higher guid-
ance: only through daily self-denial do they re-
press the encroachments of the lower nature : they
have passions and self-love which would interrupt
the calm flow of progressive life, and break its unity
into aimless sloth, tumults and wanderings : their
members are not by nature instruments of right-
eousness : only, as our Lord said, by plucking out
the right eye, by cutting off the right hand, can they
prepare themselves for God's service.
DR. J. H. THOM.
fol So long as we live in this world we cannot be
without tribulation and temptation.
The beginning of all evil temptations is incon-
stancy of mind and small confidence in God.
We know not oftentimes what we are able to do,
but temptations do show us what we are.
A KEMPIS.
foil The captive's oar may pause upon the galley,
The soldier sleep beneath his plumed crest,
And Peace may fold her wing o'er hill and valley,
But thou, O Christian ! must not take thy rest.
28
MARCH
Thou must walk on, however man upbraid thee,
With Him who trod the wine-press all alone ;
Thou wilt not find one human hand to aid thee,
One human soul to comprehend thine own.
ANONYMOUS.
C&e SSStratJ) of JHan
folll For wrath killeth the foolish man, and envy
slayeth the silly one. JOB v. 2.
For the wrath of man worketh not the righteous-
ness of God. s. JAMES i. 20.
l First, keep thyself in peace, and then shalt
thou be able to pacify others.
A passionate man turneth even good into evil,
and easily believeth the worst.
A good, peaceable man turneth all things to good.
X KEMPIS.
P The state of the man was murderous and he
knew it. More, he irritated it, with a kind of
perverse pleasure akin to that which a sick man
sometimes has in irritating a wound upon his body.
. . . Under his daily restraint, it was his compensa-
tion, not his trouble, to give a glance towards his
state at night, and to the freedom of its being in-
dulged. If great criminals told the truth, which,
being great criminals, they do not, they would very
rarely tell of their struggles against the crime. Their
struggles are towards it. They buffet with oppos-
ing waves, to gain the bloody shore, not to recede
from it. DICKENS.
29
MARCH
$i Take the cloak from his face, and at first
Let the corpse do its worst.
How he lies in his rights of a man !
Death has done all death can.
And absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.
Ha, what avails death to erase
His offence, my disgrace ?
I would we were boys as of old
In the field by the fold
His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn
Were so easily borne.
I stand here now, he lies in his place
Cover the face. BROWNING.
yii Such blind hate
Is fit for beasts of prey, but not for men.
Love comes to cancel all ancestral hate,
Subdues all heritage, proves that in mankind
Union is deeper than division.
GEORGE ELIOT.
fill My brain goes this way and that way ; 't will
not fix on aught but vengeance.
DUG DE GUISE.
30
MARCH
Quench thou the fires of hate and strife,
The wasting fever of the heart,
From perils guard our feeble life,
And to our souls Thy peace impart.
BREVIARY.
lobe for f nfctotimate
fjj Fear not : for I have redeemed thee, I have
called thee by thy name ; thou art mine.
ISAIAH xliii. i.
The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath
are the everlasting arms.
DEUTERONOMY XXXlii. 27.
yjjj The love of Jesus Christ embraced every in-
dividual of the human race, each occupying
a distinct place in His Divine Heart, and that
Heart was infinite in capacity ; it contained ample
room for all, its tenderness for one never encroach-
ing on its affection for another. Every Christian
may appropriate the Heart of Jesus Christ as if its
love had been centred in Him alone, and say with
St. Paul, "He loved me, and delivered himself
for me" Thus each mortal participates as abun-
dantly in the benign influence of the sun as if his
invigorating rays were shed on one alone.
JEAN NICHOLAS GROU.
Yes, for me, for me, He careth
With a father's tender care ;
3i
MARCH
Yes, with me, with me, He shareth
Every burden, every fear.
Yes, o'er me, o'er me, He watcheth,
Ceaseless, watcheth night and day ;
Yes, even me, even me, He snatcheth
From the perils of the way.
Yes, in me, in me, He dwelleth ;
I in Him, and He in me ;
And my empty soul He filleth
Here and through eternity.
H. BONAR.
Jtti Men of keen hearts would be overpowered
by despondency, and would even loathe exist-
ence, did they suppose themselves under the mere
operation of fixed laws, powerless to excite the pity
or the attention of Him who has appointed them.
What should they do, especially, who are cast
among persons unable to enter into their feelings,
and thus strangers to them ; or who have perplexi-
ties of mind they cannot explain ^o themselves,
much less remove, and no one to help them ; or who
have affections and aspirations pent up within them,
because they have not met with objects to which to
devote them ; or who are misunderstood by those
around them, and find they have no words to set
themselves right with them ; or who seem to them-
selves to be without place or purpose in the world,
or to be in the way of others ; or who have the bur-
den of some painful secret, or of some incommuni-
32
MARCH
cable solitary grief! In all such cases the Gospel
narrative supplies our very need, not simply present-
ing to us an unchangeable Creator to rely upon,
but a compassionate Guardian; a discriminating
Judge and Helper. CARDINAL NEWMAN.
jtlf Most assuredly no one loves your soul half so
much as our Lord Jesus Christ. He is All-
Powerful to help you. No one else can help you, save
through Him, but He can help you alone. He will
not fail to bear the heaviest weight of your trouble,
and to draw you gently to Him. Picture Him as
stretching out His arms to you, offering you His
Help, calling you to hold converse with Him ; and
longing, far beyond anything you can imagine, that
you should dwell in Him and He in you. All the
evil we do not commit, all the temptations to which
we do not consent, or which never visit us, all our
holy thoughts and good intentions, all our long-
ings after that which is right, are so many witnesses
of His Loving Kindness towards us ; for faith
teaches us that without Him we can do nothing.
How could He help you thus unless He cared for
yOU ? PERE DE CONDREN.
P In the joy of the Resurrection we shall see the
countenance of the Friend who has loved us,
sorrowed for us, died for us ; the countenance of
the Son of God fixed upon each one of us ; the eyes
of our Redeemer looking upon us personally one
by one ; His voice speaking to us as He spoke to
33
MARCH
Mary at the sepulchre, calling us each one by
name. This is the beginning of the joy.
CARDINAL MANNING.
yfii Alone, no ! God hath been there long before,
Eternally hath waited on that shore
For us who were to come
To our eternal home ;
And He hath taught His angels to prepare
In what way we are to be welcomed there.
Like one that waits and watches He hath sate
As if there were none else for whom to wait,
Waiting for us, for us,
Who keep Him waiting thus,
And who bring less to satisfy His love
Than any other of the souls above.
FABER.
SSRoman.
A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.
PROVERBS xii. 4.
The Lord is with thee : blessed art thou among
women. s. LUKE i. 28.
God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made
under the law. GALATIANS iv. 4.
And there appeared a great wonder in heaven ; a
woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under
her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.
REVELATION xii. I.
34
MARCH
In one of the most rich and beautiful of
European galleries hangs Raphael's greatest
Madonna, called the Madonna of St. Sixtus.
Among the dreary sands at the edge of the Egyp-
tian desert, under the shadow of the Pyramids,
stands the mighty Sphinx, the work of unknown
hands, so calm and so eternal in its solitude that it
is hard to think of it as the work of human hands
at all. These two suggest comparisons which are
certainly not fancies. They are the two great ex-
pressions, in art, of the two religions the religion
of the East and of the West. Fatalism and Provi-
dence they seem to mean. Both have tried to
express a union of humanity with something which
is its superior; but one has joined it only to the
superior strength of the animal, while the other has
filled it with the superior spirituality of a divine
nature. The Sphinx has life in its human face
written into a riddle, a puzzle, a mocking bewilder-
ment. The Virgin's face is full of a mystery we can-
not fathom, but it unfolds to us a thousand of the
mysteries of life. It does not mock, but blesses
us. The Sphinx oppresses us with colossal size.
The Virgin is not a distortion or exaggeration, but
a glorification of humanity. The Egyptian monster
is alone amid its sands, to be worshipped, not loved.
The Christian woman has her child clasped in her
arms, enters into the societies and sympathies of
men, and claims no worship except love.
BISHOP BROOKS.
35
MARCH
In all the history of the past, through all
man's experience, we have seen the Crea-
tive Principle made operative through that reflected
glory, Queen of Heaven, the feminine attribute
of Love; the gentle power of Beauty leading us
always upward towards the perfect Light. This
has ever been the element which has lifted us out
of the night and death of selfishness into the glo-
rious light of day, making us co-creators with the
Creator, till, in giving ourselves to His purposes,
we at last find our long-sought Happiness. Through-
out all human story we have seen this principle in-
carnated for us and manifested in Woman. Here,
then, is the true Heroine of our Drama of Exist-
ence, which closes with this as the final word of
life:
" The Eternal, the Womanly,
Lifts, leads us on."
GOETHE'S KEY TO FAUST, BY w. P. ANDREWS.
j^jj There is not a war in the world, no, nor an
injustice, but you women are answerable for
it ; not in that you have provoked, but in that you
have not hindered. There is no suffering, no in-
justice, no misery in the earth, but the guilt of it
lies with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but
you should not be able to bear it. ... Have you
ever considered what a deep undermeaning there
lies, or at least may be read, if we choose, in our
custom of strewing flowers before those whom we
think most happy ? The path of a good woman is
36
MARCH
indeed strewn with flowers, but they rise behind
her steps, not before them. . . . Far away among
the moorlands and the rocks, far in the darkness of
the terrible streets, these feeble florets are lying,
with all their fresh leaves torn and their stems
broken. Will you never go down to them nor set
them in order in their little fragrant beds, nor fence
them, in their trembling, from the fierce wind ?
Shall morning follow morning for you but not for
them? ... Oh, you queens, you queens, among
the hills and happy greenwood of this land of yours,
shall the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air
have nests ; and in your cities shall the stones cry
out against you, that they are the only pillows
where the Son of Man can lay His head ?
RUSKIN.
The role of Christian women was some-
thing similar to that of the guardian an-
gels they might lead the world, but while remain-
ing invisible themselves. It is very seldom that
angels become visible in the hour of supreme danger,
as the Angel Raphael did to Tobit ; so is it only at
certain moments long foreseen, that the empire of
woman becomes visible, and that we behold these
angels, who were the saviors of Christian society,
manifesting themselves under the names of Blanche
of Castille and Joan of Arc. F. OZANAM.
jflrtJU I* 1 tne First Epistle to the Corinthians,
St. Paul speaks of the glory of the woman
as of a thing distinct from the glory of the man.
37
MARCH
Their endowments are unlike ; their work is differ-
ent; their provinces are separate. If she ape the
man she will lose the half of love, and yet not gain
the commanding mind. . . . To live in the hearts
of those who make the laws is more than to have a
vote. And if we must take a gloomy view, I, for
one, agree with Madame de Stael, the most intel-
lectual of women. "It were far better," she says,
" in order to keep something sacred on earth, that
in marriage there should be one slave rather than
two free-thinkers." BISHOP SPALDING.
It is a significant fact that in all religious
systems which, instead of representing God
chiefly as moral Lawgiver, are fond of dwell-
ing on Him as the Holy Spirit, there the prophets
are, or at least may be, women. So was it among
the Phrygian Christians of old, who developed the
doctrine of the Paraclete. So has it ever been
among the Society of Friends, who keep silence
till the Spirit speaks. So is it when the Catholic
ecstatica attests the supernatural grace that still
penetrates and consecrates the organism of the vis-
ible Church. DR. JAMES MARTINEAU.
Seraph of Heaven ! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman
All that is insupportable in thee
Of light and love and immortality.
Sweet Benediction in the eternal curse !
Veil'd Glory of this lampless universe !
Thou Moon beyond the clouds ! Thou living Form
38
MARCH
Among the dead ! Thou Star above the storm !
Thou Wonder and thou Beauty and thou Terror !
Thou Harmony of Nature's art ! Thou Mirror
In whom, as in the splendor of the sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on !
SHELLEY.
j*jP O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,
Created beings all in lowliness
Surpassing, as, in height above them all ;
Term by the eternal counsel pre-ordained ;
Ennobler of thy nature, so advanced
In thee that its great Maker did not scorn
To make Himself His own creation ;
For in thy womb rekindling shone the love
Revealed whose genial influence makes now
This flower to germin in eternal peace ;
Here thou to us of charity and love
Art as the noonday torch ; and art beneath
To mortal men of hope a living spring.
DANTE.
ffi$i Mother of the Fair Delight
Thou handmaid perfect in God's sight,
Now sitting fourth beside the Three,
Thyself a woman-Trinity
Being a daughter born to God,
Mother of Christ from stall to rood,
And wife unto the Holy Ghost :
Oh, when our need is uppermost,
Think that to such as death may strike
Thou once wert sister sisterlike !
39
MARCH
Thou headstone of humanity,
Groundstone of the great Mystery,
Fashioned like us, yet more than we !
Ah ! knew'st thou of the end, when first
That Babe was on thy bosom nurs'd ?
Or when He tottered round thy knee
Did thy great sorrow dawn on thee ?
And through His boyhood, year by year
Eating with Him the Passover,
Didst thou discern confusedly
That holier sacrament, when He,
The bitter cup about to quaff,
Should break the bread and eat thereof ?
Soul, is it Faith, or Love, or Hope,
That lets me see her standing up
Where the light of the Throne is bright ?
Unto the left, unto the right,
The cherubim, arrayed, conjoint,
Float inward to a golden point,
And from between the seraphim
The glory issues for a hymn.
DANTE ROSSETTI.
40
FOR THE MONTH OF
APRIL
T WILL call them my people, which were not my
people; and her beloved, which was not be-
loved. ROMANS ix. 25.
That which may be known of God is manifest in
them ; for God hath shewed it unto them.
ROMANS i. 19.
These, having not the law, are a law unto them-
selves : which shew the work of the law written in
their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness,
and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else
excusing one another. ROMANS ii. 14, 15.
H Men begin, little children begin, by calling God
by the primal name of Father. It was a name
revealed in Paradise ; but if no revelation had been
made, it would have welled up from human con-
sciousness like the waters that are under the earth.
In the vast deserts of heathenism where the shade
of death has lain, and still lies, the untutored mass
of the people have ever been, and are still, aware
APRIL
of a Heavenly Father. Amid all superstitions and
all false teaching, in spite of ignorance and degra-
dation, may we not hope that as it is undoubtedly
true that no instance can be named where a people
have not looked up to One above, so in their inculp-
able ignorance, not only will the multitudes escape
condemnation, but many will even have elicited by
God's grace that act of clinging and pious love
which will have lifted them to the seats of the
Blessed ? And he who knows God under the name
of Father can it be denied that he has a true and
real knowledge of Him ? BISHOP OF NEWPORT
AND MENEVIA.
Ill We have been taught that Christ is the First
begotten of God ; that He is the Reason of which
all mankind are partakers ; and that those who
live according to Reason are Christians. Such
among the Greeks were Socrates, Heraclitus, and
the like. Whatsoever at any time the philosophers
or law-givers said or discovered that was God, they
did it according to their measure of Reason, Light,
and Knowledge ; but because they knew not Reason
to the full, which is Christ, they many times said
things contradictory one to another.
JUSTIN MARTYR.
A The soul of Man is Christian by Nature.
TERTULLIAN.
|jj From the Conscience of the Heathen accusing
or excusing them, I argue that there is some
42
APRIL
other rule for human actions besides the written
Word ; and that this rule could be no other than the
Law of Nature, and of Right Reason, imprinted in
their hearts, which is as truly the Law and Word of
God as that written in our Bible. The law of Nature
leads us to do actions conformable to those which
Christianity inspires, for Christianity has only re-
established and perfected the law of Nature; so
that I am persuaded there is no Christian virtue
but the traces and sentiments thereof may be found
in ancient Paganism, how corrupt soever it may
have been. . . . Before the birth of Christ many
holy persons, not of the race of Abraham, obtained
salvation by the observation of the Law of Nature.
BISHOP SANDERSON.
fj Everywhere throughout the world, everywhere
throughout the ages, men have sought holiness.
The best and noblest men everywhere have always
been true seekers after God. That is inexplicable
if Christianity is a new power, a new gift to the
faculties of man, nay, as it often seems to be stated,
a new set of faculties in man which he has not pos-
sessed before. But how entirely explicable, how
natural it is, if what the Incarnation did was to re-
deem men into what was their original and unde-
stroyed nature and privilege. BISHOP BROOKS.
Jj| "And I saw that there was an Ocean of Dark-
ness and Death : but an infinite Ocean of Light
43
APRIL
and Love flowed over the Ocean of Darkness : and
that I saw the infinite Love of God. 7 '
GEORGE FOX.
foil All souls that struggle and aspire,
All hearts of prayer by thee are lit ;
And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire
On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit.
Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know'st,
Wide as our need thy favors fall ;
The white wings of the Holy Ghost
Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all.
WHITTIER.
<Stief for t&e Loss of ne
folll The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul
of David, and Jonathan loved him as his
own soul. I SAMUEL xviii. i.
Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and
Lazarus. s. JOHN ii. 5.
Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of
his disciples, whom Jesus loved. s. JOHN xiii. 23.
if It might be supposed that the Son of God
Most High could not have loved one man
more than another ; or again if so, that He would
not have had only one friend, but, as being All-
holy, He would have loved all men more or less, in
proportion to their holiness. Yet we find our Sa-
44
APRIL
viour had a private friend ; and this shows us first,
how entirely He was a man, as much as any of us,
in His wants and feelings ; and next, that there is
nothing contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, no-
thing inconsistent with the fulness of Christian
love, in having our affections directed in an espe-
cial way towards certain objects, towards those
whom the circumstances of our past life, or some
peculiarities of character, have endeared to us.
CARDINAL NEWMAN.
All my love
Lies buried in the grave no mortal wish
Finds place within this bosom.
I have no farther business in the world
But to remember him.
SCHI7.LER.
t The King had watched with a heart sore
stirred
For two whole days, and this was the third :
And still to all his court would he say,
" What keeps my son so long away ? "
" Your son and all his fellowship
Lie low in the sea with the White Ship."
King Henry fell as a man struck dead ;
And speechless still he stared from his bed
When to him next day my rede I read.
45
APRIL
There 's many an hour must needs beguile
A King's high heart that he should smile,
Full many a lordly hour, full fain
Of his realm's rule and pride of his reign :
But this King never smiled again.
DANTE ROSSETTI.
j| He sat alone,
Hating companionship that was not hers ;
Felt bruised with hopeless longing ; drank, as wine,
Illusions of what had been, would have been.
It has been so with rulers, emperors,
Nay, sages who held secrets of great Time,
Sharing his hoary and beneficent life,
Men who sat throned among the multitudes,
They have sore sickened at the loss of one.
GEORGE ELIOT.
fill The South- wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire ;
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost, he cannot restore ;
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.
I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs ;
And he, the wondrous child,
APRIL
Whose silver warble wild
Outvalued every pulsing sound
Within the air's cerulean round,
The hyacinthine boy, for whom
Morn well might break and April bloom,
The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,
Has disappeared from the Day's eye;
Far and wide she cannot find him ;
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
EMERSON.
jftj) The face, which duly as the sun
Rose up for me with life begun,
To mark all bright hours of the day
With daily love, is dimmed away
And yet my days go on, go on.
The heart, which like a staff, was one
For mine to lean and rest upon,
The strongest on the longest day
With steadfast love, is caught away
And yet my days go on, go on.
E. B. BROWNING.
Reunion
In my Father's house are many mansions : I
go to prepare a place for you. I will come
47
APRIL
again and receive you unto myself ; that where I
am, there ye may be also. Because I live, ye shall
live also. s. JOHN xiv. 2, 3, 19.
When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then
shall ye also appear with him in glory.
COLOSSIANS iii. 4.
jfyi The grown-up man feels his father's life beat-
ing from beyond the grave, and is sure that
in his own eternity the child relation to that life
will be in some mysterious and perfect way re-
sumed and glorified ; that he will be something to
that dear life and it to him forever.
BISHOP BROOKS.
What is excellent,
As God lives is permanent ;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;
Heart's love will meet thee again.
Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored,
Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness ;
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found.
EMERSON.
48
APRIL
How amazing will be to us, when we shall
reach that heavenly shore, our incredulity,
our limitations, our dulness, our failure to catch at
least some hints and foregleams of things to come !
The shadows are here, the lights are there. Do
not reverse the truth, and talk of the life to come
as if sight were to be turned into faith, not faith
into sight ; as if we were not to see eye to eye ; as
if there could be no more beholding of the Lord
and no more leaning upon His breast, like that
which is recorded of the beloved disciple. Believe
in persons, in forms, in beating hearts, in the kin-
dling eye, in the voice of pure affection ; and that to
be translated and transfigured is only to be clothed
upon with a more serviceable and expressive form.
DR. RUFUS ELLIS.
J^ "Ah ! could thy grave at home, at Carthage,
be ! "
Care not for that, and lay me where I fall !
Everywhere heard will be the judgment callj
But at God^s altar, oh, remember me.
Thus Monica, and died in Italy.
Yet fervent had her longing been, through all
Her course, for home at last, and burial
With her own husband, by the Libyan sea.
Had been ! but at the end, to her pure soul
All tie with all beside seem'd vain and cheap,
And union before God the only care.
49
APRIL
Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole,
Yet we her memory, as she pray'd, will keep,
Keep by this : Life in God, and union there /
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
)* My best beloved, I most eagerly desire to see
thee, that on me may come the benediction
of the dying. Perhaps I may come ; perhaps not.
However this may be, I have loved thee from the
beginning, I shall love thee without end. I may
confidently say that I shall never, in the end, lose
one so beloved. For me, he does not die ; he only
goes before, to whose soul mine adheres in a tie
never to be relaxed, in a bond not to be broken.
Only remember me, when thou shalt have come
thither, going before me ; and may it be given to
me to follow thee quickly, and to come again to
thee. In the mean time remember that never will
the sweet remembrance of thee depart from me,
though thy presence be withdrawn from grieving
hearts. s. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX.
j^l Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees,
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play ;
Who hath not learned in hours of faith
The truth, to flesh and sense unknown,
That life is ever lord of death,
And love can never lose its own.
WHITTIER.
50
APRIL
Sacrifice
If any man will come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross daily and
follow me. s. LUKE ix. 23.
Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier
of Jesus Christ. n TIMOTHY ii. 3.
If the devil take a less hateful shape to us
than to our fathers, he is as busy with us
as with them ; and if we cannot find it in our hearts
to break with a gentleman of so much worldly
wisdom, who gives such admirable dinners, and
whose manners are so perfect, so much the worse
for us. LOWELL.
For if it be a special office of the Church
to bear witness against the world, her wit-
ness must especially be borne against the reigning
vices of the world ; and therefore in these days
against effeminacy, the worship of comfort, and the
extravagances of luxury. ... If the Church has
to witness against the reigning vices of the world,
each soul has likewise, if not to witness, at least
to defend itself, against them. And how shall it
defend itself against the worship of bodily com-
forts, except by depriving itself of them ? Change-
able as the world is, it is unchanging too. The
world, the flesh, and the devil are practically the
same in all ages ; and so, practically, mortification
has the same offices to perform. Whether we
51
APRIL
consider the soul in the struggles of its conversion,
in the progress of its illumination or in its variously
perfect degrees of union with God, we shall find
that bodily mortifications have their own place, and
their proper work to do, and are literally indispen-
sable. FABER.
Conscience, the timid being's inmost light,
Hope of the dawn and solace of the night,
Cheers these recluses with a steady ray
In many an hour when judgment goes astray.
Ah, scorn not hastily their rule who try
Earth to despise and flesh to mortify,
Consume with zeal, in winged ecstasies
Of prayer and praise forget their rosaries,
Nor hear the loudest surges of St. Bees.
WORDSWORTH.
The sublime vision comes to the pure and
simple soul in a clean and chaste body.
Milton says that the epic poet, he who shall sing of
the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink
water out of a wooden bowl. EMERSON.
There are, in the soul, qualities which
may be acquired by exercise and habit,
as the body acquires certain powers and certain
habits. . . . Have you never noticed how quickly
and clearly the small soul of the wicked grasps the
things upon which it is bent, and what power it
acquires in so doing ? It sees very plainly, only it
chooses to direct its vision to evil things. But take
52
APRIL
those same souls in infancy, cut away and prune
all the growth of passions akin to the flesh; set
them free from those heavy clods which cling to the
pleasures of the table and similar delights ; take
away that weight which drags the mental vision
down to everything which is low. Instantly, in
that same soul, the eye, set free, turns towards
realities, and sees them as clearly as it now sees
those things which absorb it. PLATO.
Where are the stern abstinences of St.
Monica in regard to the sorceries of the
earth? Who suspects the ecstasies of which our
intemperances deprive us ? Where are souls ever
new, and growing, through their search after wisdom,
from childhood unto death ? And who suspects the
floods of light and true love which would burst
forth from Christian souls for the salvation and
happiness of mankind at the cost of a little effort ?
P&RE GRATRY.
To Jesus self-sacrifice always is a means
of freedom. That is what always gives to
the self-denials which He demands a triumphant
and enthusiastic air. Not because you have not
deserved to enjoy it, not because it is wicked to
enjoy it, but because there is another enjoyment
more worthy of your nature, for which the native
appetite shall show itself in you the moment that
you really lay hold of it ; therefore let this first in-
ferior enjoyment go ; and by this conception of the
purpose of self-sacrifice, Christ's law and limit of
53
APRIL
self-sacrifice is always settled. One day a young
man came to Jesus. "What lack I yet?" And
then said Jesus, "Go and sell all that thou hast,
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come
and follow me." He did not say, " You do not de-
serve wealth." He did not say, " It is wicked to be
rich." He only said, " You will be free if you are
poor, and then I can lead you to the Father, in
whom you shall find yourself." BISHOP BROOKS.
jfl Hark, how I '11 bribe you.
Aye, with such gifts that heaven shall share
with you.
Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,
Or stones, whose rates are either rich or poor
As fancy values them, but with true prayers,
That shall be up at heaven, and enter there,
Ere sunrise ; prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.
SHAKESPEARE.
54
FOR THE MONTH OF
MAY
9
T HAVE trodden the wine-press alone.
ISAIAH Ixiii. 3.
When Jesus therefore perceived that they would
come and take him by force, to make him a king, he
departed again into a mountain himself alone.
S. JOHN vi. 15.
|| " I have trodden the wine-press alone." The
sound of the words is solemn and pensive and
almost mournful. It lingers on the ear like the sigh
of a lonely spirit. It seems to speak of those bur-
dens which the human soul must bear alone, the
dangers it must struggle with alone, and of those
great crises of existence in which the arm of friend-
ship and the heart of love are withdrawn or are un-
availing. . . . We are made for society, and we are
also made for solitude. We are made for the free
and confiding converse of our fellow-men, and we
are made for lonely thoughts and emotions in which
none living may take part. There are a thousand
55
MAY
ways in which God will have us feel that we are one
for mutual aid, and He has ways also to teach us
that we are so many separate beings and pass be-
fore Him one by one, and can lean only upon Him,
and have no other stay. ... No closet, no Chris-
tianity. So teaches our Lord, and so teaches all
the experience of His followers.
DR. GEORGE PUTNAM.
Ill Spirituality did ever choose loneliness. For
there the far, the departed, the loved, the un-
seen, the divine, throng freely in, and there is no
let or hindrance to the desires of our souls. Mem-
ory, the glass in which we gaze on the absent, is
called into requisition least where the present are
thickest. Solitude is our trysting-place with the
dead. God be thanked no earthly power can close
that retreat or bar us from the sinless fellowship it
holds. DR. W. R. ALGER.
ifo It is an awful truth, that there neither is nor
can be any genuine enjoyment of poetry among
nineteen out of twenty of those persons who live,
or wish to live, in the broad light of the world,
among those who either are, or are striving to make
themselves, people of consideration in society.
This is a truth, and an awful one, because to be
incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the
word, is to be without love of human nature and
reverence for God. WORDSWORTH.
56
MAY
jj We live too little within. What has become of
that inner eye which God has given us to keep
watch over the soul, to be the witness of the mys-
terious play of thought, the ineffable movement of
life, in the tabernacle of humanity ? It is shut ; it
sleeps. MAURICE DE GURIN.
jjj The world 's infectious ; few bring back at
eve,
Immaculate, the manners of the morn.
Something we thought, is blotted ; we resolved,
Is shaken ; we renounced, returns again.
Nor is it strange : light, motion, concourse, noise,
All scatter us abroad ; thought, outward bound,
Neglectful of our home affairs, flies off,
And leaves the breast unguarded to the foe.
We see, we hear, with peril ; safety dwells
Remote from multitude ; the world 's a school
Of wrong, and what proficients swarm around !
We must or imitate or disapprove ;
Must list as their accomplices or foes ;
That stains our innocence ; this wounds our peace.
YOUNG.
foil I sit upon the sands alone ;
The lightning of the noontide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet did any heart now share in my emo-
tion !
57
MAY
I love all waste
And solitary places, where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.
SHELLEY.
Soctctp
fojjl God setteth the solitary in families.
PSALM Ixviii. 6.
These things I command you, that ye love one
another. s. JOHN xv. 17.
He that loveth his brother abideth in the light.
I JOHN ii. 10.
| I do not mean by the elevation of the labor-
ing classes an outward change of condition.
It is not release from labor. It is not struggling
for another rank. It is not political power. I
understand something deeper. I know but one
elevation of a human being, and that is Elevation
of Soul. There are not different kinds of dignity
for different orders of men, but one and the same
to all. The only elevation of a human being con-
sists in the exercise, growth, energy of the higher
principles and powers of his soul. A bird may be
shot upward to the skies by a foreign force ; but it
rises, in the true sense of the word, only when it
spreads its own wings and soars by its own living
power. ... I maintain that the philosophy which
does not see in the laws and phenomena of
outward nature the means of awakening Mind is
MAY
lamentably shortsighted ; and that a state of so-
ciety which leaves the mass of men to be crushed
and famished in soul by excessive toils on matter is
at war with God's designs, and turns into means of
bondage what was meant to free and expand the
SOul. DR. CHANNING.
Very hateful to the fervid heart and sincere
mind of Dante would have been the modern
theory which deals with sin as involuntary error,
and by shifting off the fault to the shoulders of
Atavism or those of Society, personified for pur-
poses of excuse, but escaping into impersonality
again from the grasp of retribution, weakens that
sense of personal responsibility which is the root of
self-respect and the safeguard of character. " It
is Thou," he says sternly, "who hast done this
thing, and Thou, not Society, shalt be damned for
it ; nay, damned all the worse for this paltry subter-
fuge." LOWELL.
| I put no faith in any indefinite advancement of
Society ; but I believe in the development and
progress of the individual human being. If we
study carefully a representation of Society moulded,
as it were, upon the living form, with all its good
and all its evil, we shall find that while thought (or
rather passion, which is thought and feeling com-
bined) is the social element and bond, it is also an
element of destruction. In this respect the social
life is like the physical life : races and men attain
longevity only by the non-exhaustion of the vital
59
MAY
force. Consequently, instruction, or to speak more
correctly, religious education, is the great principle
of the life of Society, the only means of diminish-
ing the total of evil and augmenting the total of good
in human life. Thought, the fountain of all good
and of all evil, cannot be trained, mastered, and
directed except by religion ; and the only possible
religion is Christianity, which created the modern
world and will preserve it. BALZAC.
$11 Crouch'd on the pavement, close by Bel-
grave Square,
A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied.
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were
bare.
,!*::< j
Some laboring men, whose work lay somewhere
there,
Pass'd opposite ; she touch'd her girl, who hied
Across, and begg'd, and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.
Thought I : " Above her state this spirit towers ;
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.
" She turns from that cold succor which attends
The unknown little from the unknowing great,
And points us to a better time than ours."
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
60
MAY
Flit God is in fact the Preserver and Father of all
that is in the world, and He acts in every-
thing that acts, not as the workman who labors
and grows weary, but as an omnipotent virtue
which operates. ARISTOTLE.
fit) Our ordinary life with one another, what
in the language of the world we call society,
has so left and lost the spontaneousness of natural
impulse and so failed to attain the highest concep-
tion of itself as the family of God, it so hangs fast
in the dull middle regions of conventional propriety
and selfish expediency, that it becomes not the
fountain, but the grave, of individuality. Nowhere
do we find on earth that picture of society recon-
structed by the idea of Jesus, society around the
throne of God, which shines out upon us from the
mysterious promises of the Apocalypse, the glory
of which society is to be this : that while the souls
stand in their vast choruses of hundreds of thou-
sands, yet each bears the sacred name written on
the flesh of his own forehead, and carries in his
hand a white stone on which is written a new name
which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.
... It is in the wonderful combination of the
vast and transcendental with the minute and the
familiar in Him who was both "conceived by the
Holy Ghost " and also " born of the Virgin Mary,"
that the fitness of the Saviour not merely for the
rescue of the soul, but for the salvation of society,
is found. BISHOP BROOKS.
61
MAY
for Ife
jfy I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great re-
ward. GENESIS XV. I.
Our sufficiency is of God. n CORINTHIANS iii. 5.
pfot The contemplation of God and nothing but it
is able fully to open and relieve the mind;
to unlock, occupy, and fix our affections. We may
indeed love created things with great intenseness,
but such affection, when disjoined from the love of
the Creator, is like a stream running in a narrow
channel, impetuous, vehement, turbid. The heart
runs out only at one door ; it is not an expanding
of the whole man. Created natures cannot open to
us or elicit the ten thousand mental senses which
belong to us, and through which we really live.
None but the presence of our Maker can enter us,
for to none besides can the whole heart in all its
thoughts and feelings be unlocked and subjected.
. . . We know that even our nearest friends enter
into us but partially, and hold intercourse with us
only at times ; whereas the consciousness of a per-
fect and enduring presence, and it alone, keeps our
heart open. ... If it be not over-bold to say it
He who is infinite alone can be its measure. He
alone can answer to that mysterious assemblage of
feelings and thoughts which it has within it.
CARDINAL NEWMAN.
62
MAY
Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beautiful
of ancient days, yet ever new ! too late I
loved Thee ! And behold, Thou wert within and I
abroad, and there I searched for Thee ; deformed
I, plunging amid those fair forms, which Thou
hadst made. Thou wert with me, but I was not
with Thee. Things held me far from Thee, which,
unless they were in Thee, were not at all. . . .
When I shall with my whole self cleave to Thee, I
shall nowhere have sorrow or labor; and my life
shall wholly live, as wholly full of Thee. But now
since whom Thou fillest Thou liftest up, because I
am not full of Thee I am a burden to myself.
S. AUGUSTINE.
But what is infinite must be a home, *\
A shelter for the meanest life,
Where it is free to reach its greatest growth,
Far from the touch of strife.
Thus doth Thy hospitable greatness lie
Outside us like a boundless sea ;
We cannot lose ourselves where all is home
Nor drift away from Thee.
Out on that sea we are in harbor still,
And scarce advert to winds and tides
Like ships that ride at anchor with the waves
Flapping against their sides.
FABER.
63
MAY
j Be sure that in God alone can the deep crav-
ings of our immortal being find enough. He
has so made man's heart for Himself that it is ever
restless until it finds rest in Him.
CARDINAL MANNING.
j* Christ! I am Christ's! and let the name
suffice you,
Aye, for me too He greatly hath sufficed :
Lo, with no winning words I will entice you,
Paul has no honor and no friend but Christ.
Yes, without cheer of sister or of daughter,
Yes, without stay of father or of son,
Lone on the land and homeless on the water,
Pass I in patience till the work be done.
Then with a ripple and a radiance through me
Rise and be manifest, O Morning Star !
Flow on my soul thou Spirit, and renew me,
Fill with Thyself, and let the rest be far.
Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through
sinning,
He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed :
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.
FREDERIC W. H. MYERS.
ffli Where hath it ever been well with me with-
out Thee ? or when could it be ill with me,
when Thou wert present ?
MAY
For many friends cannot profit, nor strong helpers
assist, nor prudent counsellors give a profitable
answer, nor the books of the learned afford com-
fort, nor any precious substance deliver, nor any
place, however retired and lovely, give shelter,
unless Thou Thyself dost assist, help, strengthen,
console, instruct, and guard me. A KEMPIS.
J¬otng <250*r
I will even betroth thee unto me in faithful-
ness ; and thou shalt know the Lord.
HOSEA ii. 20.
That I may know him, and the power of his res-
urrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings.
PHILIPPIANS iii. 10.
m human nature a faculty separate
from the faculties by which we judge of the
things of sense and the abstractions of the pure
intellect, but yet a true and trustworthy faculty,
for knowing God for knowing God in some such
way as we know the spirits and souls, half dis-
closed, half concealed under the mask and garment
of the flesh, among whom we have been brought
up, among whom we live ? Can we know Him in
such a true sense as we know those whom we love
and those whom we dislike ? Is there a faculty
in the human soul for knowing its Maker and
God knowing Him, though behind the veil
knowing Him, though flesh and blood can never see
Him knowing Him, though the questioning in-
65
MAY
tellect loses itself in the thought of Him ? . . . In
the Psalms is the evidence of that faculty. The
proof that the living God can be known by man is
that He can be loved and longed for with all the
freedom and naturalness and hope of human affec-
tion. The answer whether God has given to man
the faculty to know Him might be sought in vain in
the Vedas or the Zendavesta. It is found in the
book of Psalms. DEAN CHURCH.
day, at tne corner of a street, in some
solitary path, we stop we listen, and a
voice whispers to us in the centre of our souls, " Be-
hold, there is Jesus Christ," a heavenly moment in
which the soul, after gazing on a thousand perish-
able beauties, discovers at a single glance that one
Beauty which can never deceive. Those who have
never experienced this may treat it as a dream,
but those who have once beheld what I speak of
can never forget it more. ... I can no longer love
any one, without the soul stealing behind the heart,
so that Jesus Christ stands between us.
LACORDAIRE.
jj*fo He who has never watched in sorrow, and
watered his bed with tears, knows you not,
ye heavenly powers. GOETHE.
The more I study happy people, the more
I feel terrified at their incapacity for divine
things ; that is, with some few exceptions. And
even what we take for exceptions may probably
66
MAY
only seem such from our ignorance of the real state
of the heart. Suffering has a thousand unknown
doors by which to enter, besides those grand ones
which are seen by all the world. It makes itself
many a secret way, hidden perhaps by flowers, and
travels fast and far; for it is the most active of
God's messengers. It carries the cross of Jesus
Christ ; and humanity is so shaped as to allow of
that burden passing everywhere. Whoever attains
to the knowledge and love of God has nothing to
desire and nothing to regret; he has received the
highest of all gifts, which ought to make us forget
all besides. LACORDAIRE.
^ ^ ie greatest trials and miseries of
this life seems to me to be the absence of
a grand spirit to keep the body under control ; ill-
nesses and grievous afflictions, though they are a
trial, I think nothing of if the soul is strong, for it
praises God, and sees that everything comes from
His hand. But to be on the one hand suffering,
and on the other doing nothing, is to be in a fear-
ful state, especially for a soul that has had earnest
desires never to rest inwardly or outwardly.
S. THERESA.
In contrast with the moral impulse of the
mind which looks at the differences of
things is the devout which seeks their unity. . . .
We sigh for a conscious union with God, which is
far from being implied in mere obedience to Him ;
nay, which is excluded till obedience gives place to
MAY
a freer and less reluctant harmony with Him. . . .
Without this mood of contemplative oneness with
God, this genial melting of our life in His, there
may be in us no want of masculine sense and en-
ergy, of clear truth and honor, of faithful constancy
under temptation ; but there will also be a Jewish
hardness and narrowness of mind, a dry, unmel-
lowed temper, an egotistic and critical irreverence
for all that will not submit to our survey. If aspi-
ration is not to die out from our religion, if affec-
tion and self-oblivion are not to fly away and leave
it empty of all diviner habitant, if the love of
God, as a passion and a power, is not to be insult-
ingly dismissed among the romances of the past,
we must open a more hospitable heart to the Gos-
pel of the Spirit, and more deeply enter into the
life of the living God. DR. JAMES MARTINEAU.
Thou hidden love of God, whose height,
Whose depth unfathomed, no man knows !
I see from far thy beauteous light ;
Inly I sigh for thy repose ;
Then shall my heart from care be free,
When it hath found repose in thee.
Each moment draw from earth away
My heart that lowly waits thy call.
Speak to my inmost soul, and say,
" I am thy Love, thy God, thy All."
To feel thy power, to hear thy voice,
To taste thy love, is all my choice.
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN, TR. BY JOHN WESLEY.
68
MAY
fflf Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
My soul that turns to His great love on high,
Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Thou, who dost dwell alone ;
Thou, who dost know thine own ;
Thou to whom all are known,
From the cradle to the grave,
Save, O, save !
From the world's temptations ;
From tribulations ;
From that fierce anguish
Wherein we languish;
From that torpor deep
Wherein we lie asleep,
Heavy as death, cold as the grave,
Save, O, save !
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
69
FOR THE MONTH OF
JUNE
SDotrtte
T ORD, I believe ; help thou mine unbelief.
s. MARK ix. 24.
Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you
an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the
living God. HEBREWS iii. 12.
H Why should we reject that light which consoles
the heart because it is mingled with obscurity
which humbles the intellect ? Should not the true
religion elevate and lower man by showing him at
once his greatness and his weakness ? You have not,
as yet, a sufficiently enlarged view of Christianity.
. . . We are not to examine whether it is neces-
sary for God to reveal to us mysteries in order
to humble our understanding. The question is
whether or not He has revealed them. If He has
spoken, obedience and love cannot be separated.
Christianity is a fact, . . . Does not God possess
an infinite knowledge which we have not? If He
makes known some part of it by supernatural
70
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means, we are no longer to examine into the nature
of what is revealed, but into the certainty of the rev-
elation ; mysteries appear to us to be inconsistent
without in reality being so. FENELON.
Ill When St. Louis himself was troubled, how
many souls must have doubted, and suffered in
silence ! But the bitterness of this first falling off
in faith was that men shrank from avowing it. At
this day we are inured and hardened to the torments
of doubt : the points are blunted. . . . Christ him-
self, of whom Job was the type, experienced this
anguish of doubt, this night of the soul, when not
a star appears above the horizon. 'T is the last
pang of the Passion ; the summit of the cross. . . .
Although the Passion is active and voluntary, inas-
much as this will is in a body, this soul in a cover-
ing, this God in a man, there is a moment of fear
and doubt. It is this which rends in twain the
veil of the temple, which shrouds the earth in dark-
ness, which troubles me as I read the Gospel, and
which to this day wrings tears from me. That God
should have doubted God ! that the sacred victim
should have said, " Father, Father, have you then
forsaken me " ! MICHELET.
ilj The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's
shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd ;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
JUNE
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
j) A little philosophy withdraws us from religion,
but a good deal of philosophy brings us back to it
again : nobody denies the existence of God, except-
ing the man who has reason to wish that there were
none. BACON.
jjj You say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
I know not : one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touched a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true :
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gathered strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them.
TENNYSON.
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JUNE
foil From doubt, where all is double,
Where wise men are not strong ;
Where comfort turns to trouble ;
Where just men suffer wrong ;
Where faiths are built on dust ;
Where love is half mistrust,
Hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea ;
O, set us free !
O, let the false dream fly
Where our sick souls do lie,
Tossing continually.
O, where thy voice doth come,
Let all doubts be dumb ;
Let all words be mild ;
All strife be reconciled ;
All pains beguiled.
Light bring no blindness ;
Love no unkindness ;
Knowledge no ruin ;
Fear no undoing,
From the cradle to the grave,
Save, O, save ! MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped
for. HEBREWS xi. i.
Ye believe not because ye are not of my sheep,
as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice and
I know them and they follow me.
s. JOHN x. 26, 27.
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JUNE
| What is here said about exercises of reason in
order to believing ? What is there not said of
sympathetic feeling, of newness of spirit, of love ?
The safeguard of faith is a right state of heart.
This it is which gives it birth ; it also disciplines it.
... It is holiness, or dutifulness, or the new crea-
tion, or the spiritual mind, however we word it,
which is the quickening and illuminating principle
of true faith, giving it eyes, and hands, and feet. It
is Love which forms it out of the rude chaos into
an image of Christ. . . . We believe because we
love. How plain a truth. CARDINAL NEWMAN.
There is a Christian experience which depends
very little upon sight, and is a faith more than it is
anything else because it is the answer to the appeal
which Jesus makes to our consciences, and our
moral sense, and our innate religiousness, our
welcome of the Master's sweet and comfortable
words, our joyful response to His Gospel of forgive-
ness and Divine help, and life and immortality. . . .
It is blessed to believe in Him because He brings
us to God, and reconciles us to man, and Himself
takes our infirmities, and speaks to us words of
eternal life. Blessed are they who believe in the
perpetuity of Christianity because they see how in-
dependent it is of so much knowledge which may
be discredited, and of so much opinion which may
become only a fashion of the past, and how it cre-
ates ages of faith instead of being created by them.
DR. RUFUS ELLIS.
74
JUNE
jft There is no power but in conviction. If a train
of reasoning is strong, a poem divine, a pic-
ture beautiful, it is because the understanding or the
eye, to whose judgment they are submitted, is con-
vinced of a certain truth, hidden in this reasoning,
this poem, this picture. . . . Friendship, patriotism,
love, every noble sentiment, is likewise a species of
faith. For the same reason, they who believe no-
thing, who treat all the convictions of the soul as
illusions, who consider every noble action as insan-
ity, for the same reason such hearts will never
achieve anything great or generous : they have
faith only in matter and in death, and they are
already insensible as the one, and cold and icy as
the other. . . . Faith, celestial comforter, thou dost
more than remove mountains : thou takest away the
heavy burdens by which the heart of man is griev-
ously oppressed ! CHATEAUBRIAND.
Y\l The eye is not made for the source of light,
but only for the objects which the rays from
that source strike. This fact is full of deep mean-
ing. It is the same with our soul. In the nat-
ural state of man, our soul is incapable of seeing
God himself; but it is made for the light which
He diffuses, and which He sheds upon that soul
and upon all objects. To see God himself requires
a modification of human nature, a conversion, a
transformation ; or rather a new birth, which man
cannot by his own efforts attain, and which God
alone, who created him, can give him. After this
supernatural new birth, the soul can and should see
75
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God. And its first look at God is faith, - faith
which is dim at first, like the first inkling of a great
light, but which becomes clear vision in proportion
to the growth of our soul. PERE GRATRY.
fill Faith, that dawning vision.
THOMAS AQUINAS.
Faith, that attempt at vision. BOSSUET.
Plfo Lord ! I believe ; but thou dost know
My faith is cold and weak :
Pity my frailty, and bestow
The confidence I seek.
Yes ! I believe, and only thou
Canst give my soul relief :
Lord ! to thy truth my spirit bow ;
Help thou my unbelief.
DR. JOHN R. WREFORD.
Perfection t&tDttgf) Suffering
jfl) Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father
which is in heaven is perfect.
S. MATTHEW V. 48.
For it became him, for whom are all things, and
by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto
glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect
through sufferings. HEBREWS ii. 10.
i)t In the Cross is salvation, in the Cross is life,
in the Cross is strength of mind, in the Cross
76
JUNE
joy of spirit, in the Cross the height of virtue, in
the Cross the perfection of sanctity. A KEMPIS.
foll You are good; you want to be better, and
you are making great efforts in the details of
life ; but I am afraid that you are encroaching
rather too much upon the inner life in order to *
adapt the outer life to the demands of society, and f
that you are not sufficiently denying the very inmost
self. . . . We sometimes indulge in certain half-
concealed clingings to our grandeur, our reputation,
our comforts. If we look carefully within ourselves,
we shall find that there are certain limits beyond
which we refuse to go in offering ourselves to God.
We hover around these reservations, making be-
lieve not to see them, for fear of self-reproach,
guarding them as the apple of the eye. The more
we shrink from giving up any such reserved point,
the more certain it is that it needs to be given up.
FENELON.
jfyiii The perfect way is hard to flesh,
It is not hard to love ;
If thou wert sick for want of God,
How swiftly wouldst thou move.
Be docile to thine unseen Guide,
Love Him as He loves thee ;
Time and obedience are enough,
And thou a saint shall be.
FABER.
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JUNE
| If you touch the Cross, it will leave its mark
upon you. If you bear no print of the Cross,
be sure that you have never touched it yet. Sorrow,
humility, self-denial, a tender conscience, a spirit of
love, these are the marks of the Lord Jesus, the
print of the nails, and the pledges of our pardon.
CARDINAL MANNING.
PP If ever we are left to look upon the cross
and all that it symbolizes as a stumbling-block
and foolishness, and to think how much more fit
and attractive it would have been if our Leader had
been made one of the bright children of the morn-
ing, and his life made all beautiful through this
world's felicities and charms, let us remember that
this world's prosperity and beauty and joy, though
they are God's gifts, though they are meant for
men, and may be sought and welcomed and grate-
fully enjoyed, are not the highest things, are not
a religion nor the basis of a religion, are of the
world, worldly ; good, but not best ; beautiful, but
not the most beautiful ; not a religion ; that love and
duty and self-renunciation and superiority to the
world, that these are highest and best, that these
are religion, that the Leader and Christ must shine
preeminently in these, and that these can flourish
and blossom and ripen only under the shadow
of a cross, and that, therefore, the cross is not an
offence or a foolishness, but a necessity and a boon,
the one true symbol of God's best love and man's
highest hope and destiny.
DR. GEORGE PUTNAM.
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JUNE
| God draws a cloud over each gleaming morn.
Would we ask why ?
It is because all noblest things are born
In agony.
Only upon some cross of pain or woe
God's son may lie ;
Each soul redeemed from self and sin must know
Its Calvary.
FRANCES POWER COBBE.
J¬olefcge from Sentence
j*j*|j If any man will do his will, he shall know
of the doctrine. s. JOHN vii. 17.
Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and
cometh not to the light, that his works may not be
reproved. s. JOHN iii. 20.
Intellectual errors result from moral defects.
The soul of man is one and indivisible, and
the intellect and will are but diverse faculties of this
one indivisible soul. As one speck of dust obscures
the sight, so one disordered affection will influence
and pervert the judgment. And this the more
powerfully because its action is so often unper-
ceived.
Of this power to warp the judgment, Hobbes
had before remarked that if men had any interests
at stake, they would doubt and deny the axioms of
Euclid. HETTINGER.
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JUNE
As the man is, so is his God ;
Therefore is God so often mocked.
GOETHE.
The human intellect is not a dry light, but re-
ceives a tincture from the will and affections ;
hence it generates knowledge according to its
wishes, for what a man would rather was true, that
he more easily believes. BACON.
ijj If the proposition that three angles of a tri-
angle equalled two right angles involved any
moral obligation, its truth would soon be called in
question. DE BONALD.
Jflfoil In all human science and knowledge the
will is the immediate and principal agent.
For it is the will which finally determines the in-
telligence, and which, by its own power, can reject
any conclusion whether necessary or deduced.
ULRICI.
All knowledge must be based on morals,
or at least has its moral side ; man can-
not grasp with his intellect truths which his heart
rejects, since in hardening his will he hardens also
his understanding against the truth. The imme-
diate cause of error is indeed in the darkening
of the understanding, but its root lies in corruption
of the will and its revolt from God. The chief
sources of our errors are, then, to be found in the
will. Indeed, we never discover the moral character
So
JUNE
of an error until we have overcome and rejected it,
then its connection with our inclinations and faults
is plain. DOLLINGER.
In God's spiritual universe there are no fa->/
vorites of heaven who can attain knowledge '
and spiritual wisdom apart from obedience. It is
not a rare, partial condescension of God, arbitrary
and causeless, which gives knowledge of the Truth
to some, and shuts it out from others ; but a vast,
universal, glorious law. The light lighteth every
man that cometh into the world. " If any man
shall do His will, he shall know." . . . You ask
bitterly, like Pontius Pilate, What is Truth ? In
such an hour what remains ? I reply, Obedience.
Leave those thoughts for the present. Act be
merciful and gentle honest ; force yourself to
abound in little services ; try to do good to others ;
be true to the Duty that you know. That must be
right whatever else is uncertain. And by all the
laws of the human heart, by the word of God, you
shall not be left to doubt. Do that much of the
will of God which is plain to you, " You shall know
of the doctrine, whether it be of God."
F. W. ROBERTSON.
fffl But, above all, the victory is most sure
For him who, seeking faith by virtue, strives
To yield entire obedience to the Law
Of Conscience reverenced and obeyed,
As God's most intimate presence in the soul,
And His most perfect image in the world.
8l WORDSWORTH.
FOR THE MONTH OF
JULY
T ET the oppressed go free. ISAIAH Iviii. 6.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free. s. JOHN viii. 32.
If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall
be free indeed. s. JOHN viii. 36.
II The body of the laws and the spirit of them
should tend to enlighten to the utmost the Peo-
ple, that is, persons who own nothing, workmen,
proletaries, etc., so as to advance them as soon as
possible into the easy circumstances of the inter-
mediate class. But, while so doing, the People
should be kept under a powerful control, so that its
individuals may be able to find light, help, and pro-
tection ; and that no ideas, no combinations or in-
trigues, should make it turbulent. The greatest
liberty should be given to the upper class, for it has
much to preserve and all to lose, and cannot, there-
fore, become licentious. The government should
have all possible power. Thus, the government,
82
JULY
the upper class, and the middle class have each an
interest in making the lowest class happy and able
to rise into the middle class, in which lies the real
power of all States. This system appears to me,
not the best, but the least defective. BALZAC.
ttt The principles of Christianity are the future of
the world. Of all my projects, my studies, and
my experiences, nothing remains to me save a com-
plete disenchantment of everything that the world
pursues. My religious convictions, as they have
grown and developed, have swallowed up all other
convictions ; on the whole earth there is not a more
believing Christian and a more incredulous man
than myself. Far from having reached its final
term, the religion of the Great Deliverer has scarcely
entered its third or political period. The gospel
which contains our sentence of acquittal has not
yet been read by all. . . . Christianity, so stable
in its dogmas, is ever changeful in its lights : its
transformation includes the transformation of all
things. When it shall have attained its highest
point the darkness will be entirely cleared away;
Liberty, crucified on Calvary with the Messiah, will
thence descend with Him; and she will restore to
the nations that New Testament which was written
in their favor, and which has hitherto been fettered
in its operation. CHATEAUBRIAND.
ft) The conception of man's freedom as ethical and
spiritual, as resting upon the infinite worth of
human personality, and its direct relation with the
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JULY
Divine Personality, has been the direct source of
all that is noblest in modern civilization. It is a
principle which has been too strong for the usur-
pations, whether of Churches or of States, and
which has issued in the gradual emancipation of the
forces which make up individual life. Liberty of
person, liberty of property, liberty of worship, liberty
of education, they are all the fruits of what Victor
Hugo has called finely, if with too French rhetoric,
the Tree of Liberty which was planted on Gol-
gotha eighteen centuries ago.
QUARTERLY REVIEW.
j) The rule of the people looks to something
higher than opportunity for every man to have
food and a home, to something more than putting a
church, a school, and a newspaper at every man's
door. Saints and heroes, philosophers and poets,
are a people's glory. They give us nobler loves,
higher thoughts, diviner aims. They show us how
like a god man may become; and political and
social institutions which make saints and heroes,
philosophers and poets impossible can have but
inferior value. BISHOP SPALDING.
fol Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet :
Above her shook the starry lights :
She heard the torrents meet.
Her open eyes desire the truth.
The wisdom of a thousand years
JULY
Is in them. May perpetual youth
Keep dry their light from tears ;
That her fair form may stand and shine,
Make bright our days and light our dreams,
Turning to scorn with lips divine
The falsehood of extremes !
TENNYSON.
foil Another star 'neath Time's horizon dropped
To gleam o'er unknown lands and seas ;
Another heart that beat for freedom stopped
What mournful words are these !
Yet Thou hast called him, nor art Thou unkind,
O Love Divine, for 'tis thy will
That gracious natures leave their love behind
To work for Freedom still.
LOWELL.
Itiertp
kilt Though I be free from all men, yet have I
made myself servant unto all, that I might
gain the more. i CORINTHIANS ix. 19.
I came down from Heaven not to do my own
will, but the will of Him that sent me. My meat is
to do the will of Him that sent me.
S. JOHN iv. 34.
IP My own teaching has been and is that Liberty,
whether in the body, soul, or political estate of
85
JULY
man, is only another word for Death, and the final
issue of Death Putrefaction ; the body, spirit,
and political estate being healthy only by their
bonds and laws. RUSKIN.
When God made man in the beginning, He gave
him a perfect liberty. Now the first temptation
came through the intellect, and as it passed through
the thoughts, it wrought upon the soul, it under-
mined the steadfastness of the will. The abuse of
its liberty and power was this : to do evil, to break
the known law. . . . The Sacred Heart of Christ
our Lord and King is always by the power of His
love attracting the human will in all its freedom to
Himself. Out of the unwilling He creates the will-
ing. Liberty without Jesus Christ is the worst
of bondage. My yoke is sweet, my burden light.
Liberty is in the heart. True liberty is in the ser-
vice of Him who must reign until He hath put all
His enemies under His feet.
CARDINAL MANNING.
PI The founders of New England were sober,
earnest, and thoughtful men; and it was no
Utopia, no New Atlantis, no realization of a splen-
did dream, which they had at heart, but the estab-
lishment of the divine principle of Authority on
the common interest and the common consent ; the
making, by a contribution from the free-will of all,
a power which should curb and guide the free-will
of each for the general good. . . . John of Leyden
had taught them how unendurable by the nostrils
86
JULY
of honest men is the corruption of the right of pri-
vate judgment in the evil and selfish hearts of men
when no thorough mental training has developed
the understanding and given the judgment its need-
ful means of comparison and correction. They
knew that liberty in the hands of feeble-minded and
unreasoning persons (and all the worse if they are
honest) means nothing more than the supremacy of
their particular form of imbecility ; means nothing
less, therefore, than downright chaos, a Bedlam- y
chaos of monomaniacs and bores. LOWELL.
fil To know the truth and obey it makes us free.
To know the truths of the physical and ma-
terial world and to act in accordance with them
makes us free in the domain of the body and the
senses. To know the laws of intelligence and to
obey them makes the intellect free to discover the
truth. To know the moral laws and obey them
frees us from the power of moral evil. To know
the laws of the spiritual world and to conform our-
selves to them gives to us the glorious liberty of
the sons of God. The freedom of man, at first
hardly more than caprice, may rise into the freedom
of obedience, and thus becomes perfect. It begins
as a feeble instinct, and becomes a majestic power.
... As man allies himself with immortal truth and
infinite good, his powers expand till he possesses
the world. It is by this law that all things work
together for good to them that love God.
DR. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.
87
JULY
111 Weak is the people but will grow beyond
all other
Within thy holy arms, thou fruitful victor-Mother !
Liberty, whose conquering flag is never furled
Thou bearest Him in whom is centred all the
World.
VICTOR HUGO.
v|jj Do I not love thee, Lord most High,
In answer to thy love for me ?
1 seek no other liberty
But that of being bound to thee.
My God, I here protest to thee,
No other will I have than thine ;
Whatever thou hast given me
I here again to thee resign.
IGNATIUS LOYOLA, TR. BY CASWALL.
intellect (Senitta
)*fo I have given thee a wise and an understanding
heart. i KINGS iii. 1 2.
God hath not given us the spirit of fear ; but of
power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
ii TIMOTHY i. 7.
Gird up the loins of your mind. i PETER i. 13.
jfyi The word Truth, then, is distinctly a word of
the intellect. Whatever other elements may
enter in, however it may enlarge itself, and become
a word of the entire nature, the intellectual element
88
JULY
can never be cast out of it. He whose favorite
word is truth must be a man who values intellectual
life, who is not satisfied unless his own intellect is
living, and who conceives of his fellow-men as be-
ings in whom the intellect is an important and val-
uable part. This must belong to any habitual use
of the word at all ; and so, when we find it appear-
ing constantly upon the lips of Jesus, in the record
of that one of his disciples who understood Him
best, we feel that we know this at least about Him,
that He cared for the intellect of man, that He
desired to exercise some influence upon it, that
He was not satisfied simply to win man's affection
by his kindness, nor to govern man's will by his
authority, but that He also wished to persuade
man's mind with truth. BISHOP BROOKS.
To act with a purpose is what raises man
above the brutes ; to invent with a purpose, to
imitate with a purpose, is that which distinguishes
genius from the petty artists who only invent to
invent, imitate to imitate. Genius aims at work-
ing on our powers of desire and abhorrence with
objects that deserve these feelings, and ever strives
to show these objects in their true light, in order
that no false light may lead us to what we should
desire and abhor. The artist should live with
steady purpose in the Whole, the Good, the Beauti-
ful. The fashion of this world passes, and I would
fain occupy myself with that only which constitutes
abiding relations. LESSING.
JULY
The higher the mind, it may be taken as a uni-
versal rule, the less it will scorn that which
appears to be small or unimportant ; and the rank of
a painter may always be determined by observing
how he uses, and with what respect he views, the
minutiae of nature. Greatness of mind is not shown
by admitting small things, but by making small
things great under its influence. He who can take
no interest in what is small will take false interest
in what is great. RUSKIN.
jty The greatness of intellectual men is imper-
ceptible to kings, to the rich, to captains, to
all those carnally great. The greatness of Wisdom
which is nowhere but in God is imperceptible both
to the carnal and to the intellectual. There are
three orders differing in kind. Great geniuses
have their empire, their renown, their greatness,
their victory, and their lustre, and have no need of
material grandeurs, with which they have no rela-
tion. The saints have their empire, their renown,
their victory, their lustre, and have no need of
material or intellectual grandeurs, with which they
have no relation, for they neither add to them nor
take from them. They are seen of God and angels,
and not by body and curious intellect. God is
sufficient for them. PASCAL.
j Every individual nature has its own beauty.
There is no face, no form, which one cannot
in fancy associate with great power of intellect or
with generosity of soul. EMERSON.
90
JULY
j*j*| In some the genius is a thing apart,
A pillared hermit of the brain,
Hoarding with incommunicable art
Its intellectual gain.
His nature brooked no lonely lair,
But basked and burgeoned in co-partnery,
Companionship and open-windowed glee.
And God to him was very God,
And not a visionary wraith
Skulking in murky corners of the mind ;
And he was sure to be
Somehow, somewhere, imperishable as He,
Not with His essence mystically combined,
As some high spirits long, but whole and free,
A perfected and conscious Agassiz.
LOWELL.
of g>in
If thy hand offend thee, cut it off.
S. MARK ix. 43.
Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and
doeth it not, to him it is sin. s. JAMES iv. 17.
And when the blood of thy martyr Stephen was
shed, I also was standing by, and consenting unto
his death. ACTS xxii. 20.
Why stand ye here all the day idle ?
S. MATTHEW XX. 6.
91
JULY
One sin involves another, and forever an-
other, by a fatal parthenogenesis, and the
key which unlocks forbidden doors to our will or
passion leaves a stain on the hand, that may not be
as dark as blood, but that will not out; the per-
petual silt of some one weakness, the eddies of a
suspicious temper depositing their one impalpable
layer after another, may build up a shoal on which
an heroic life and an otherwise magnanimous na-
ture may bilge and go to pieces. LOWELL.
)*tS) I do not know of anything in the world
which requires so many precautions as love ;
for the affection by its very nature penetrates the
soul and takes possession of all its faculties, and
thus the soul is easily carried away by a thousand
digressions into deplorable excesses.
S. ANGELA OF FOLIGNE.
Jtjfy Remember that falls are not always by the
grosser sins which the world takes count of,
but by spiritual sins, subtle and secret, which leave
no stain upon the outward life.
CARDINAL MANNING.
" To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth
it not, to him it is Sin." Which of us can
meet this test ? Who orders his life according to
this rule ? Who distributes his time in obedience
to this law? Who expends his means, that por-
tion of them which he holds himself free to spend,
and does spend on things not necessaries, according
92
JULY
to the suggestions of this spirit ? How much of
obvious good do we all know, to which we contrib-
ute nothing of effort, sacrifice, prayer, or thought
to bring it forth into life and being ! How many
gracious and, in this suffering world, most needful
things has God's spirit suggested to our hearts as
good, holy, and useful, things that clearly ought to
be done, and yet the suggestion received no enter-
tainment from our souls ; we turned to our own
ways and dismissed it to forgetfulness ! How
much do we know that would be good good for
our own souls, good for those near to us as our own
souls, good for the world which, being within our
power, we yet neither do, nor mean to do !
DR. J. H. THOM.
My friends, the angry words of God's book
are very merciful they are meant to drive
us home ; but the tender words, they are sometimes
terrible. Notice these, the tenderest words of the
tenderest prayer that ever came from the lips of a
blessed martyr, the dying words of the holy Saint
Stephen : " Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."
Is there nothing dreadful in that? Read it thus:
" Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.' 7 Not to the
charge of them who stoned him ? To whose charge
then ? Go, ask the holy Saint Paul. Three years
afterward, praying in the temple at Jerusalem, he
answered that question : " I stood by and con-
sented." He answered for himself only; but the
Day must come when all that wicked council that
sent Saint Stephen away to be stoned, and all that
93
JULY
city of Jerusalem, must hold up the hand and say,
We also, Lord, we stood by ! Ah, friends, under
the simpler meaning of that dying saint's prayer for
the pardon of his murderers is hidden the terrible
truth that we all have a share in one another's sins.
G. w. CABLE.
We must be watchful, especially in the be-
ginning of the temptation : for the enemy is
then more easily overcome, if he be not suffered to
enter the door of our hearts, but be resisted with-
out the gate at his first knock. A KEMPIS.
Wi$ The mora l office of tragedy is to show us our
own weaknesses idealized in grander figures
and more awful results, to teach us that what we
pardon in ourselves as venial faults, if they seem to
have but slight influence on our immediate fortunes,
have arms as long as those of kings, and reach for-
ward to the catastrophe of our lives ; that they are
dry-rotting the very fibre of will and conscience, so
that if we should be brought to the test of a great
temptation, or a stringent emergency, we must be
involved in a ruin as sudden and complete as that
we shudder at in the unreal scene of the theatre.
LOWELL.
jfl*j* The lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the
street
Lie as they fell ? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food, but trodden into clay ?
94
JULY
Or golden coins squandered, and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet ?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The throats of men in hell, who thirst alway ?
I do not see them here ; but after death,
God knows, I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
" I am thyself, what hast thou done to me ? "
" And I and I thyself (lo ! each one saith),
And thou thyself, to all eternity."
DANTE ROSSETTI.
The sinfulness of sin consists not only in the
specific evil of each particular act, but in the
whole of our case before God ; in our relation to
Him, His holiness, compassion, and long-suffering ;
in His dealings with us, and our ingratitude, cold-
ness, insensibility, in return.
CARDINAL MANNING.
95
FOR THE MONTH OF
AUGUST
animals
/^\UT of the ground the Lord God formed every
^?? beast of the field and every fowl of the air.
GENESIS ii. Ip.
Who provideth for the raven his food.
JOB xxxviii. 41.
Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom ? JOB xxxix. 26.
Doth the eagle mount up at thy command ?
JOB xxxix. 27.
Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle
upon a thousand hills. PSALM 1. 10.
II Can anything be more marvellous or startling,
unless we were used to it, than that we should
have a race of beings about us whom we do but see,
and as little know their state, or can describe their
interests or their destiny, as we can tell of the in-
habitants of the sun and moon ? It is indeed a very
overpowering thought, when we get to fix our minds
on it, that we familiarly use, I may say hold, inter-
course with creatures who are as much strangers to
96
AUGUST
us, as mysterious, as if they were the fabulous,
unearthly beings, more powerful than man, and yet
his slaves, which Eastern superstitions have invent-
ed. We have more real knowledge about the
Angels than about the brutes. They have appar-
ently passions, habits, and a certain accountable-
ness, but all is mystery about them. We do not
know whether they can sin or not, whether they are
under punishment, whether they are to live after
this life. We inflict very great sufferings on a
portion of them, and they in turn, every now and
then, seem to retaliate upon us, as if by a wonderful
law. We depend upon them in various important
ways ; we use their labor, we eat their flesh.
CARDINAL NEWMAN.
lit I heard the wild beasts in the woods com-
plain ;
Some slept, while others wakened to sustain
Through night and day the sad monotonous round,
Half savage and half pitiful the sound.
The outcry rose to God through all the air,
The worship of distress, an animal prayer,
Loud vehement pleadings, not unlike to those
Job uttered in his agony of woes.
The beasts of burden linger on their way,
Like slaves who will not speak when they obey ;
Their faces, when their looks to us they raise,
With something of reproachful patience gaze.
FABER.
97
AUGUST
|j) Only a fallen horse stretched out there on the
road,
Stretched in the broken shafts, and crushed by the
heavy load ;
Only a fallen horse, and a circle of wondering eyes
Watching the 'frighted teamster goading the beast
to rise.
Hold ! for his toil is over no more labor for him ;
See the poor neck outstretched, and the patient
eyes grow dim ;
See on the friendly stones how peacefully rests the
head
Thinking, if dumb beasts think, how good it is to
be dead ;
After the weary journey, how restful it is to lie
With the broken shafts and the cruel load wait-
ing only to die.
Watchers, he died in harness died in the shafts
and straps
Fell, and the burden killed him ; one of the day's
mishaps
One of the passing wonders marking the city
road
A toiler dying in harness, heedless of call or goad.
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.
fo He whose tender mercies are over all his works
hath placed a principle in the human mind,
which incites to exercise goodness towards every
living creature ; and this being singly attended to,
98
AUGUST
people become tender-hearted and sympathizing;
but when frequently and totally rejected, the mind
becomes shut up in a contrary disposition.
JOHN WOOLMAN.
fo{ Both Man and Woman wept when Thou wert
dead ;
Not only for a thousand thoughts that were
Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy
share ;
But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee,
Found scarcely anywhere in like degree !
For love, that comes to all the holy sense,
Best gift of God in thee was most intense ;
A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind,
A tender sympathy, which did thee bind
Not only to us Men, but to thy Kind :
Yea, for thy Fellow-brutes in thee we saw
The soul of Love, Love's intellectual law :
Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame ;
Our tears from passion and from reason came,
And, therefore, shalt thou be an honored name !
WORDSWORTH.
foil Plato, anticipating the reviewers,
From his republic banished without pity
The poets : in this little town of yours,
You put to death, by means of a committee,
The ballad-singers and the troubadours,
The street-musicians of the heavenly city,
The birds, who make sweet music for us all
In our dark hours, as David did for Saul.
99
AUGUST
How can I teach your children gentleness,
And mercy to the weak, and reverence
For Life, which, in its weakness or excess,
Is still a gleam of God's omnipotence,
Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less
The selfsame light, although averted hence,
When by your laws, your actions, and your speech,
You contradict the very things I teach ?
LONGFELLOW.
There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be
quiet. JEREMIAH xlix. 23.
But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it
cannot rest. ISAIAH Ivii. 20.
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for
the first heaven and the first earth were passed
away ; and there was no more sea. REVELATION
xxi. I.
(jp To one familiar with the aspects of the sea, and
yet not so familiar with them as to make them
commonplace, to such an one the sea is perhaps
the most impressive part of the creation. There is
nothing in nature, except perhaps the evening sky,
that gives such an impression of infinity as the
ocean. To the eye, and almost to the imagination,
it is boundless. To the plummet, it is unfathom-
able. Its depths are secret and mysterious. And
the power which the sea exhibits deepens this feel-
ing of infinity. The sea, ever moving, never resting,
AUGUST
heaving every moment from its foundations, and
sending its huge tidal waves, as by one act, around
the globe, one hour so tranquil and beneficent,
and the next a devouring monster, to-day bearing
the navies of the earth gently upon its friendly
bosom, and to-morrow, it may be, ready to wrench
them to pieces by its violence, it is, as it were, a
living omnipotence, the visible type of Almighty
power, put forth in sensible reality.
DR. GEORGE PUTNAM.
P Behold the Sea,
The opaline, the plentiful, the strong,
Yet beautiful as is the rose in June.
Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,
Purger of earth, and medicine of men ;
Creating a sweet climate by my breath,
Washing out harms and griefs from memory,
And in my mathematic ebb and flow,
Giving a hint of that which changes not.
EMERSON.
1 Trust to the guiding god, follow the silent sea ;
Were shore not yet there, 'twould now arise
from the wave ;
For 'Nature is to Genius linked eternally,
And ever will perform the promise Genius gave.
SCHILLER.
j*(j Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
101
AUGUST
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
WORDSWORTH.
fill Yes, in the sea of life en-isl'd
With echoing straits between us thrown
Dotting the shoreless watery wild
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
Who ordered that their longing's fire
Should be as soon as kindled, cooled ?
Who renders vain their deep desire ?
A God, a God their severance ruled ;
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
jpjt) Rocked in the cradle of the deep,
I lay me down in peace to sleep ;
Secure I rest upon the wave,
For thou, O Lord ! hast power to save.
I know thou wilt not slight my call ;
For thou dost mark the sparrow's fall !
And calm and peaceful is my sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.
102
AUGUST
In ocean caves still safe with thee
The germs of immortality :
So, calm and peaceful is my sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.
EMMA WILLARD.
J) I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and
heard behind me a great voice, as of a trum-
pet. REVELATION i. IO.
I was in the city of Joppa praying : and in a
trance I saw a vision. ACTS xi. 5.
For the prophecy came not in old time by the
will of man : but holy men of God spake as they
were moved by the Holy Ghost. n PETER i. 21.
jftl One acted upon by the first is, indeed, rapt
out of himself ; he is in the Spirit, he is in
an ecstasy, he is very much more than " moved by
the Holy Ghost," as we have rendered it. ...
But then he is not beside himself ; he is lifted
above, not set beside, his everyday self. It is not
discord and disorder, but a higher harmony and a
diviner order, which are introduced into his soul ; so
that he is not as one overborne in the region of his
lower life by forces stronger than his own, by an
insurrection from beneath ; but his spirit is lifted
out of that region into a clearer atmosphere, a
diviner day, than any in which at other times it is
permitted him to breathe. All that he before had
still remains his, only purged, exalted, quickened,
103
AUGUST
by a power higher than his own, but yet not alien
to his own ; for man is most truly man when he is
most filled with the fulness of God.
ARCHBP. TRENCH.
jfyft Angels have talked with him, and showed
him thrones :
Ye knew him not ; he was not one of ye,
Ye scorned him with an undi seeming scorn :
Ye could not read the marvel in his eye,
The still serene abstraction : he hath felt
The vanities of after and before ;
Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart
The stern experiences of converse lives,
The linked woes of many a fiery change
Had purified, and chastened, and made free.
TENNYSON.
I believe that the writings of the mystics are
the purest diamonds of the prodigious trea-
sure of humanity. . . . Mystical truths have over
ordinary truths a strange privilege ; they can neither
grow old nor die. . . . It is not only in heaven and
on earth, it is especially in ourselves, that there are
more things than all the philosophies can contain,
and as soon as we are no longer obliged to formu-
late what there is mysterious in us, we are more
profound than all that has been written, and greater
than all that exists. It is unfortunate for us, said
Carlyle, if we have in us only what we can express
and make visible. MAURICE MAETERLINCK.
104
AUGUST
r|p Gregory the Great, in the midst of overwhelm-
ing secular affairs in all quarters, had, never-
theless, ecstasies which delivered him for a moment
from their weight, and transported him, by con-
templation, into the very midst of the beatitudes of
paradise. As soon as it was allowed him to taste
a few hours of solitude, celestial visions came to re-
fill and refresh his soul. These supernatural graces
made no change in the humility which was, as it
were, the foundation of his being, and never slack-
ened his efforts to merit Heaven.
MONTALEMBERT.
j Do you believe in the mutual penetration of
minds ? Do you believe that, independent of
word and voice, independent of distance, from one
end of the world to the other, minds can influence
and penetrate one another ? Do you believe, as
Fdnelon says, that in God all men meet ? Do you be-
lieve that a thought, a movement, a love, an impulse,
can reach you by the secret influence of the heart
and mind of another ? Or rather do you not know
that every soul continually lives by the movement
of other souls, resists, yields to, agrees perpetually
with them ? Do you not know that a soul can feel
within it another soul which touches it ? If you
do not know this, you do not know the everyday
things of earth ; how, then, can you comprehend
the things of heaven ? PERE GRATRY.
j*j Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres
I find a magic bark ;
105
AUGUST
I leap on board : no helmsman steers :
I float till all is dark.
A gentle sound, an awful light !
Three angels bear the holy Grail :
With folded feet, in stoles of white,
On sleeping wings they sail.
Ah, blessed vision ! blood of God !
My spirit beats her mortal bars,
As down dark tides the glory slides,
And star-like mingles with the stars.
TENNYSON.
Kit!) anU Poor
I was a father to the poor. JOB xxix. 16.
Both low and high, rich and poor together.
PSALM xlix. 2.
The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of
riches. s. MARK iv. 19.
The rich he hath sent empty away.
s. LUKE i. 53.
Only Christ the Saviour is able to create the
synthesis of the neighbor and the enemy.
He is the God-Man, and in Him extremes meet and
are transformed, love and hate, purity and sin,
faith and knowledge, spirit and matter. In His
presence the divisions and antagonisms that em-
bitter and poison life die away. He is not the Sav-
iour of the Jew or the Gentile, of the Greek or the
barbarian, of the freeman or the slave, but of man
simply. The love and mercy which bowed the
106
AUGUST
heavens and brought Him down were wide and
deep as humanity. In Heaven is the Father of all,
and on earth all men are brothers.
BISHOP SPALDING.
There is no escaping the severity of the Sav-
iour upon the matter of wealth and poverty.
Strange to say, to the casual reader of the Sacred
Scriptures, it seems the one subject upon which
His words always ring with a terrible directness
against the trespasser. The repentant thief the
outcast who turned in his misery upon the cross
had only to look to be forgiven. The sudden anger
of St. Peter and his unhappy denials of his Saviour
were made light of. Magdalen had but to fall at
His feet to hear her pardon pronounced. But
these rich, who know not their brothers, how re-
lentlessly does He always speak to them !
"Woe to you that are rich, for you have your
consolation." "Woe to you that are filled." And
again he said, "Go to, now, ye rich men weep
and howl in your miseries, which shall come upon
you." " I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat."
DR. J. BRISBEN WALKER.
Don Diego de Ordonez
Sallied forth in front of all,
And shouted forth his challenge
To the warders on the wall.
All the people of Zamora,
Both the born and the unborn,
107
AUGUST
As traitors did he challenge
With taunthig words of scorn.
The living in their houses,
And in their graves the dead !
And the waters of their rivers,
And their wine and oil and bread !
There is a greater army
That besets us round with strife,
A starving, numberless army,
At all the gates of life.
For within there is light and plenty,
And odors fill the air ;
But without there is cold and darkness,
And hunger and despair.
And there in the camp of famine,
In wind and cold and rain,
Christ, the great Lord of the army,
Lies dead upon the plain.
LONGFELLOW.
Creation was divine kindness. This is an
honorable genealogy for kindness. Then,
again, kindness is the coming to the rescue of
others, when they need it and it is in our power to
supply what they need ; and this is the work of the
attributes of God toward his creatures. . . . The
burden of life presses heavily upon multitudes of
the children of men. It is a yoke, very often of
such a peculiar nature that familiarity, instead of
practically lightening it, makes it harder to bear.
108
AUGUST
There are many men to whom life is always ap-
proaching the unendurable. It stops only just
short of it. ... There are some men whose prac-
tical talents are completely swamped by the keen-
ness of their sense of injustice. . . . What is our
life ? It is a mission to go into every corner it can
reach, and reconquer for God's beatitude his un-
happy world back to him. FABER.
To see their fellow-creatures under difficul-
ties to which they are in no degree acces-
sory tends to awaken tenderness in the minds of all
reasonable people ; but if we consider the condi-
tion of those who are depressed in answering our
demands, who labor for us out of our sight while
we pass our time in fulness, and consider also that
much less than we demand would supply us with
things really useful, what heart will not relent, or
what reasonable man can refrain from mitigating
that grief of which he himself is the cause, when
he may do so without inconvenience ?
JOHN WOOLMAN.
Under the smooth surface of wealth and/
easy manners, there may be more of that
known violation of Right which constitutes sin,
more of what corrupts man's nature, of impure
thoughts, of mean ambitions, of low cares, of sickly
desires, of worthless interests. It is extremely
difficult to judge of the amount of wrong that at-
taches to any case. . . . And even supposing actual
109
AUGUST
sin in the case of the exposed man, still judgment
on it proceeding from us may be a condemnation
of ourselves. What should we have been in his
place ? What was his education ? What sounds
and sights greeted his young sense ? What were
his parents ? . . . Shall sin in him be weighed in
the same scales as sin in us ? Or shall our respect-
abilities entitle us before God to as high a place as
he may win, notwithstanding actual sins ? When
opportunities are compared, who will be certain as
to the balance of merit ? A saint's life in one man
may be less than common honesty in another.
DR. J. H. THOM.
Islam, like any great Faith and insight into
the essence of man, is a perfect equalizer of
men : the soul of one believer outweighs all earthly
kingships ; all men, according to Islam too, are
equal. Mahomet insists not on the propriety of
giving alms, but on the necessity of it : he marks
down by law how much you are to give, and it is at
your peril if you neglect. The tenth part of a
man's annual income, whatever that may be, is the
property of the poor, of those that are afflicted and
need help. CARLYLE.
]jP First, have you observed that all Christ's
main teaching, by direct order, by earnest par-
able, and by his own permanent emotion, regards the
use and misuse of money ? We might have thought,
if we had been asked what a divine teacher was
no
AUGUST
most likely to teach, that he would have left infe-
rior persons to give directions about money ; and
himself spoken only concerning faith and love, and
the discipline of the passions, and the guilt of the
crimes of soul against soul. But not so. He speaks
in general terms of these. But he does not speak
parables about them for all men's memory, in all
men's sight. The Pharisees bring Him an adulter-
ess. He writes her forgiveness on the dust of
which He had formed her. Another, despised of
all for known sin, He recognized as a giver of un-
known love. . . . The two most intense of all the
parables, the two which lead the rest in love and
in terror (that of the Prodigal, and of Dives) relate,
both of them, to management of riches. The prac-
tical order given to the only seeker of advice, of
whom it is recorded that Christ " loved him," is
briefly about his property. " Sell that thou hast."
And the arbitrament of the day of The Last Judg-
ment is made to rest wholly, neither on belief in
God, nor in any spiritual virtue in man, nor on free-
dom from stress of stormy crime, but on this only :
" I was an hungered, and ye gave me drink ; naked,
and ye clothed me ; sick, and ye came unto me."
RUSKIN.
Oh, strange and sad and fatal thing,
When in the rich man's gorgeous hall,
The huge fire on the hearth doth fling
A light on some great festival,
in
AUGUST
To see the drunkard smile in state,
In purple wrapt, with myrtle crowned,
While Jesus lieth at the gate
With only rags to wrap him round.
VICTOR HUGO.
112
FOR THE MONTH OF
SEPTEMBER
9
T HAVE been young and now am old.
PSALM xxxvii. 25.
Great men are not always wise : neither do the
aged understand judgment. JOB xxxii. 9.
II How beautiful and grand an object is the
stately ship coming into her port ! She furls her
sails and is made fast to her moorings, and rests
upon her graceful shadow. How has she strug-
gled and labored ! What forces has she resisted,
and what dangers eluded ! She has not shut her
watchful eye one moment day or night, for so
long. She has carried well what was committed
to her. She has brought what was expected, and
kept sacred the charge of life and treasure with
which she was intrusted. It is an imposing and a
lovely sight. But there is one other spectacle that
in beauty, grandeur, and joy transcends that as
far as the spiritual transcends the material, and
eternity exceeds time. It is the life voyage of man
113
SEPTEMBER
completed in success and safety. The toil is over and
the danger past, the secure and peaceful haven
reached, the spirit's haven of repose, the end of
cares, the end of pains, the tranquil rest of the even-
ing hour of a good life passing gently through the
twilight into the night of death, and the brighter
dawning of the eternal day, where is rest and joy
for evermore. DR. GEORGE PUTNAM.
Ill No one should wish to see the characteristics
of one period of life appear prematurely in
another, for they can be anticipated only in an
unhealthy form. A sweet, unburdened childhood ;
an active, disciplined boyhood ; a studious or en-
terprising youth ; a laborious and responsible man-
hood, full of high trusts, with nothing lost by the
way, all the lower stages carrying their contributions
into all the higher, are necessary to the perfection
of Old Age, whose attribute is ripe wisdom, large-
ness of nature, when white hairs emblem the full
light in which all the colors of Experience blend.
DR. J. H. THOM.
lij Youth longs and manhood strives, but age re-
members,
Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past,
Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers
That warm its creeping life-blood till the last.
What though of gilded baubles he bereaves us,
Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's prime ;
114
SEPTEMBER
Think of the calm he brings, the wealth he leaves
us,
The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time !
Altars once flaming, still with incense fragrant,
Passion's uneasy nurslings rocked asleep,
Hope's anchor faster, wild desire less vagrant,
Life's flow less noisy, but the stream how deep !
o. w. HOLMES.
{) The little hedgerow birds,
That peck along the road, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression ; every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought. He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet : he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten ; one to whom
Long patience hath such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing of which
He hath no need. He is by nature led
To peace so perfect, that the young behold
With envy, what the Old Man hardly feels.
WORDSWORTH.
fol This laborer that is gone
Was childless and alone,
And homeless as his Saviour was before him ;
He told in no man's ear
His longing, love, or fear,
Nor what he thought of life as it passed o'er him.
SEPTEMBER
Thus did he live his life,
A kind of passive strife,
Upon the God within his heart relying ;
Men left him all alone,
Because he was unknown,
But he heard the angels sing when he was dying.
God judges by a light
Which baffles mortal sight,
And the useless-seeming man the crown hath won :
In His vast world above,
A world of broader love,
God hath some grand employment for His son.
FABER.
foil Rouse thee, my fainting soul, and play the
man;
And through such waning span
Of life and thought as still has to be trod,
Prepare to meet thy God.
And while the storm of that bewilderment
Is for a season spent,
And, ere afresh the ruin on me fall,
Use well the interval.
CARDINAL NEWMAN.
Skepticism
folll O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou
doubt ? S. MATTHEW xiv. $1.
How long dost thou make us to doubt ? If thou
be the Christ, tell us plainly. s. JOHN x. 24.
116
SEPTEMBER
if We cannot grasp the Infinite ; language cannot
express even what we know of the Divine Being,
and hence there remains a background of dark-
ness, where it is possible to adore or to mock.
But religion dispels more mystery than it involves.
With it, there is twilight in the world ; without it,
night. We are in the world to act, not to doubt.
Distrust is the last wisdom a great heart learns, and
noble natures feel that the generous view is, in the
end, the true view. BISHOP SPALDING.
jp Even Mr. Lecky softens a little at the thought
of the many innocent and beautiful beliefs of
which a growing skepticism has robbed us in the
decay of supernaturalism. But we need not de-
spair; for, after all, skepticism is first cousin of
credulity, and we are not surprised to see the tough
doubter Montaigne hanging up his offerings in the
shrine of our Lady of Loreto. Skepticism com-
monly takes up the room left by defect of imagina-
tion, and is the very quality of mind most likely to
seek for sensual proof of supersensual things. If
one came from the dead, it could not believe ; and
yet it longs for such a witness, and will put up with
a very dubious one. So long as night is left and
the helplessness of dream, the wonderful will not
cease from among men. LOWELL.
| The farthest reach of reason is to recognize
that there are an infinity of things above it.
It must be weak indeed if it does not see thus far.
PASCAL.
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SEPTEMBER
fli However we may explain it, a rationalistic
temper is a skeptical temper, and a skeptical
temper undermines character. Simple assent, not
reflex certitude, is the motive cause of great achieve-
ments. He who would do great things must greatly
hope. The creative epochs are invariably epochs
in which men believe. Faith watches by the cra-
dle of nations, and criticism argues and doubts over
their graves. BISHOP SPALDING.
yiil Skepticism means not intellectual doubt alone,
but moral doubt, all sorts of infidelity, insin-
cerity, spiritual paralysis. The battle of Belief
against Unbelief is the never-ending battle ! Skep-
ticism, for that century, we must consider as the
decay of old ways of believing, the preparation
afar off for new, better, and wider ways, an in-
evitable thing. We will not blame men for it, we
will lament their hard fate. We will understand
that destruction of old forms is not destruction of
everlasting substances ; that Skepticism, as sorrow-
ful and hateful as we see it, is not an end but a be-
ginning. CARLYLE.
yij) " Though the fountains of the great deep
should break up, their waters will never reach
the Lord." . . . Ah, for my own part, I rely, both
as regards Christianity and Christian art, on the
words which the Church addresses to her dead :
" Whoso believeth in me cannot die." Lord, Chris-
tianity has believed, has loved, has comprehended
in it have met God and man. It may change its
118
SEPTEMBER
vestment, but perish never. It will transform itself
to perpetuate its life. One morning it will show it-
self to those who think they are watching its tomb
and will rise again the third day. MICHELET.
duttliite Science
jj The obedience of faith. ROMANS xvi. 26.
He became obedient unto death.
PHILIPPIANS ii. 8.
As obedient children. i PETER i. 14-
i){ It is the character of children we want, and
must gain at our peril. Let us see, briefly, in
what it consists. The first character of right child-
hood is that it is Modest. A well-bred child does
not think it can teach its parents, or that it knows
anything. Then, the second character of right
childhood is to be Faithful. Perceiving that its
father knows best what is good for it, and having
found always, when it has tried its own way against
his, that he was right and it was wrong, a noble
child trusts him at last wholly, gives him its hand,
and will walk blindfold with him, if he bids it.
And that is the true character of all good men also,
as obedient workers or soldiers under captains.
They must trust their captains ; they are bound for
their lives to choose none but those whom they
can trust. Then, they are not always to be think-
ing that what seems strange to them, or wrong in
what they are desired to do, is strange or wrong.
They know their captain : where he leads they
119
SEPTEMBER
must follow, what he bids they must do ; and with-
out this trust and faith, without this captainship
and soldiership, no great deed, no great salvation,
is possible to man. It was a deed of this absolute
trust which made Abraham the father of the
faithful. RUSKIN.
jfyit The holiness of children is the very type of
saintliness ; and the most perfect conver-
sion is but a hard and distant return to the holi-
ness of a child. CARDINAL MANNING.
Nothing that happened to Joan of Arc, no-
thing that she did, was of her own seeking,
neither action, nor power, nor glory. All came
to her from above she accepted all without hesi-
tating, without debating, without counting, as we
should say now. She believed in God and she
obeyed Him. God was not for her an idea, a hope,
a light of human imagination, or a problem of
human science ; He was the creator of the world,
the Saviour of the human race by Jesus Christ ; the
Being of beings, always present, always active, the
only legitimate sovereign of man whom He has
made intelligent and free, the real and true God
whom we seek painfully to-day, and whom we shall
find only when we cease to pretend to do without
Him and put ourselves in His place. . . . Neither
our history nor any other offers a similar example,
in a modest human soul, of a faith so pure and so
effectual in divine inspiration and in patriotic hope.
GUIZOT,
120
SEPTEMBER
v| It is quite indifferent whether we say a man
seeks God in faith, or say he seeks Him by
obedience ; and whereas Almighty God has gra-
ciously declared He will receive and bless all that
seek Him, it is quite indifferent whether we say,
He accepts those who believe, or those who obey.
To believe is to look beyond this world to God, and
to obey is to look beyond this world to God ; to be-
lieve is of the heart, and to obey is of the heart ; to
believe is not a solitary act, but a consistent habit
of trust ; and to obey is not a solitary act, but a
consistent habit of doing our duty in all things. I
do not say that faith and obedience do not stand
for separate ideas in our minds, but they stand for
nothing more ; they are not divided one from the
other in fact. They are but one thing viewed dif-
ferently. ... To have a habit of faith, and to be
obedient, are one and the same general character of
mind, viewed as sitting at Jesus' feet, it is called
faith j viewed as running to do His will, it is called
obedience. CARDINAL NEWMAN.
Remember alway that the things of God must
be done in God's way. . . . Every duty, even
the least duty, involves the whole principle of obedi-
ence ; and little duties make the will dutiful, that
is, supple and prompt to obey. Little obediences
lead into great. " He that is faithful in that which
is least is faithful also in much."
CARDINAL MANNING.
121
SEPTEMBER
)^| Forth in th; name, O Lord, I go,
My daily fa or to pursue ;
Thee, only thee, .^olved to know,
In all I think, or speak, or do.
The task thy wisdom hath assigned,
O, let me cheerfully fulfil ;
In all my works thy presence find,
And prove thine acceptable will.
Thee may I set at my right hand,
Whose eyes mine inmost spirit see ;
And labor on at thy command,
And offer all my works to thee.
C. WESLEY.
Jflpstetp
jflftj But we speak the wisdom of God in a
mystery. i CORINTHIANS ii. 7.
Behold, I show you a mystery.
I CORINTHIANS XV. 51.
This is a great mystery : but I speak concerning
Christ and the Church. EPHESIANS v. 32.
Men are made quite as much by their sense
of what there is in the world which they do
not know, as by the few truths of which they think
that they have gained the mastery. The outlook
into mystery has even a stronger intellectual influ-
ence than the inspection of discovered fact.
BISHOP BROOKS.
122
SEPTEMBER
We must be willing to leave the world of
thought we know, in order to enter into the
unknown realms of His spirit.
PERE DE CONDREN.
jJ) If God discovered himself continually to men,
there would be no merit in believing Him ;
and if He never discovered himself, there would be
little faith. But He conceals himself ordinarily and
discovers himself rarely to those whom He wishes
to engage in his service. . . . The veil of nature
that covers God has been penetrated by some of
the unbelieving, who, as St. Paul says, have recog-
nized an invisible God in visible nature. . . . All
things cover some mystery. All things have veils
that cover God. Christians ought to recognize Him
in everything. Temporal afflictions cover eternal
goods to which they lead. Temporal joys cover
eternal ills that they cause. PASCAL.
A world which respects nothing but physical
facts and material force, which turns away
from the supersensuous, the ideal, the divine, as
a dream of its childhood, is assuredly doomed to
decadence and decay. The known and natural
cannot suffice for man as a moral being. Without
a spiritual horizon, the whole value of life, which is
its ethical value, fades away.
QUARTERLY REVIEW.
The thrill of awe is, as Goethe says, the
best thing humanity has. We must under-
123
SEPTEMBER
stand and feel that the visible is but the shadow of
the invisible, that the soul has its roots in God,
whose kingdom is within us. BISHOP SPALDING.
]L 4 pt)tti The degree of vision that dwells in a man
is the correct measure of the man.
CARLYLE.
There are two worlds, " the visible and the
invisible," the world we see, and the world
we do not see : and the world which we do not see
as really exists as the world we do see. All around
us are numberless objects, coming and going,
watching, working, or waiting, which we see not :
this is that other world, which the eyes reach not
unto, but faith only. . . . We are then a world of
spirits, as well as in a world of sense, and we hold
communion with it, and take part in it, though we
are not conscious of doing so. ... The world of
spirits, then, though unseen, is present ; present, not
future, not distant. It is not above the sky, it is
not beyond the grave ; it is now and here ; the
kingdom of God is among us. ... Men think that
they are lords of the world, and may do as they will.
They think this earth their property, and its move-
ments in their power ; whereas it has other lords
besides them, and is the scene of a higher conflict
than they are capable of conceiving. It contains
Christ's little ones whom they despise, and His
Angels whom they disbelieve. . . . When the An-
gels appeared to the shepherds, it was a sudden
124
SEPTEMBER
appearance, " Suddenly there was with the Angel
a multitude of the heavenly host."
CARDINAL NEWMAN.
jj* A marvel seems the universe,
A miracle our life and death ;
A mystery I cannot pierce,
Around, above, beneath.
WHITTIER.
125
FOR THE MONTH OF
OCTOBER
(Entering into tfje labors of tfjers
F SENT you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no
labour ; other men laboured, and ye are entered
into their labours. s. JOHN iv. 38.
I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave
the increase. i CORINTHIANS iii. 6.
II The multitude of men cannot, from the nature
of the case, be distinguished ; for the very idea
of distinction is, that a man stands out from the
multitude. They make little noise and draw little
notice in their narrow spheres of action ; but still
they have their full proportion of personal worth
and even of greatness. Indeed, every man in every
condition is great. . . . Perhaps in our presence,
the most heroic deed on earth is done in some
silent spirit, the loftiest purpose cherished, the
most generous sacrifice made, and we do not sus-
pect it. I believe this greatness to be most com-
mon among the multitude, whose names are never
heard. DR. CHANNING.
126
OCTOBER
III Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine is-
sues, though they were not widely visible.
Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander
broke the strength, spent itself in channels which
had no great name on the earth. But the effect of
her being on those around her was incalculably dif-
fusive ; for the growing good of the world is partly
dependent upon unhistoric acts; and that things
are not so ill with you and me as they might have
been is half owing to the number who lived faith-
fully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
GEORGE ELIOT.
jfo We hear constantly and think naturally of Cima-
bue as of a man whose peculiar genius in paint-
ing suddenly reformed its principles; who sud-
denly painted out of his own gifted imagination
beautiful instead of rude pictures, and taught his
scholar Giotto to carry on the impulse. . . . We
cannot overrate the power of the men by whom
changes seem to have been effected ; but we far over-
rate their influence because the apparently sudden
result of their labor or invention is only the mani-
fested fruit of the toil and thought of many who
preceded them, and of whose names we have never
heard. The skill of Cimabue cannot be extolled
too highly; but no Madonna by his hand could ever
have rejoiced the soul of Italy unless, for a thousand
years before, many a nameless Greek and nameless
Goth had adorned the traditions and lived in the
love of the Virgin. RUSKIN.
127
OCTOBER
jj It is notorious that those who first suggest the
most happy inventions, and open a way to the
secret stores of nature, those who weary them-
selves in the search after Truth, who strike out
momentous principles of action, who painfully force
upon their contemporaries the adoption of beneficial
measures, or, again, who are the original cause of
the chief events in national history, are commonly
supplanted, as regards celebrity and reward, by in-
ferior men. Their works are not called after them ;
nor the arts and systems which they have given the
world. Their schools are usurped by strangers ;
and their maxims of wisdom circulate among the
children of their people, forming, perhaps, a nation's
character, but not embalming in their own immor-
tality the names of their original authors.
CARDINAL NEWMAN.
t)t In this Dante, had ten silent centuries, in a
very strange way, found a voice. The Divina
Commedia is of Dante's writing; yet in truth it
belongs to ten Christian centuries, only the finish-
ing of it is Dante's. The craftsman there, the
smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with
these cunning methods, how little of all he does
is properly his work ! All past inventive men work
there with him, as indeed with all of us, in all
things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle
Ages ; the Thought they lived by stands here in
everlasting music. These sublime ideas of his,
terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the Christian
128
OCTOBER
Meditation of all the good men who had gone be-
fore him. CARLYLE.
foil He came to Florence long ago,
And painted here these walls that shone
For Raphael and for Angelo,
With secrets deeper than his own ;
Then shrank into the dark again,
And died, we know not how or when.
Thoughts that great hearts once broke for, we
Breathe cheaply in the common air ;
The dust we trample heedlessly
Throbbed once in saints and heroes rare,
Who perished, opening for their race
New pathways to the commonplace.
LOWELL.
me
ftlii And that, knowing the time, that now it is
high time to awake out of sleep.
ROMANS xiii. ii.
Walk in wisdom toward them that are without,
redeeming the time. COLOSSIANS iv. 5.
Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
EPHESIANS v. 1 6.
j Work while you have light, especially while
you have the light of morning. . . . Remem-
ber that every day of your early life is ordaining
irrevocably, for good or evil, the custom and prac-
129
OCTOBER
tice of your soul ; ordaining either sacred customs
of dear and lovely recurrence, or trenching deeper
and deeper the furrows for seed of sorrow.
RUSKIN.
Toward afternoon a person who has nothing to
do drifts rapidly away from God. To sit down
in a chair without an object is to jump into a
thicket of temptations. A vacant hour is always
the devil's hour. When time hangs heavy, the
wings of the spirit flap painfully and slow. Then
it is that a book is a strong tower, nay, a very-
church, with angels lurking among the leaves, as if
they were so many niches. FABER.
ft It is at its source that evil must be stopped ;
even though it may not arrive immediately at
its height, it must not on that account be neglected.
It will grow during your sleep ; it is only a germ,
but if you do not extirpate it, it will bring forth the
fruits of death. s. CHRYSOSTOM.
11 Beware how you regard as trifling faults which
appear of but little consequence. An accu-
mulation of small faults makes a very large one ;
grains of sand, gathered together one upon another,
form the bank on which the vessel strikes.
S. AUGUSTINE.
Another year ! another year !
The unceasing rush of time sweeps on ;
130
OCTOBER
Whelmed in its surges, disappear
Man's hopes and fears, forever gone !
O, what concerns it him whose way
Lies upward to the immortal dead,
That nearer comes the closing day,
That one year more of life has fled ?
Swift years ! but teach me how to bear,
To feel and act with strength and skill,
To reason wisely, nobly dare,
And speed your courses as you will.
ANDREWS NORTON.
jfo Every day in this world has its work ; and
every day as it rises out of eternity keeps put-
ting to each of us the question afresh, What will
you do before to-day has sunk into eternity and no-
thingness again ? And now what have we to say
with respect to this strange solemn thing time ?
That men do with it through life just what the
apostles did for one precious and irreparable hour
of it in the garden of Gethsemane ; they go to sleep.
. . . There is no mistake about it ; there it is,
a sleep, a most palpable sleep, self - indulged
unconsciousness of high destinies, and God and
Christ ; a sleep when Christ was calling out to you
to watch with Him one hour, a sleep when there
was something to be done. . . . Under no circum-
stances, whether of pain, or grief, or disappoint-
ment, or irreparable mistake, can it be true that
there is not something to be done, as well as some-
OCTOBER
thing to be suffered. There is a Past which is gone
forever, but there is a Future which is still our
Own. F. W. ROBERTSON.
<S00fc Stronger tljan toil
jft Ye are of God, little children, and have over-
come them : because greater is he that is in
you, than he that is in the world. I JOHN iv. 4.
jfyi How indestructibly the Good grows, and prop-
agates itself, even among the weedy entan-
glements of evil. CARLYLE.
jpjjll These two ignorant and unpolished people
had guided themselves, so far on in their
journey of life, by a religious sense of duty and
desire to do right. Ten thousand weaknesses and
absurdities might have been detected in the breasts
of both ; ten thousand vanities additional, possibly,
in the breast of the woman. But the hard, wrath-
ful and sordid nature that had wrung as much
work out of them as could be got in their best days,
for as little money as could be paid to hurry on
their worst, had never been so warped but that it
knew their moral straightness and respected it.
In its own despite, in a constant conflict with it-
self and them, it had done so. And this is the eter-
nal law. For, Evil often stops short at itself and
dies with the doer of it ; but Good never.
DICKENS.
132
OCTOBER
If in his cheek unholy blood
Burned for one youthful hour,
'T was but the flushing of the bud
That blooms a milk-white flower.
O. W. HOLMES.
PIP Yes, still our place is kept, and it will wait,
Ready for us to fill it, soon or late :
No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been,
Since Good, though only thought, has life and
breath,
God's life can always be redeemed from death.
And evil in its nature is decay,
And any hour can blot it all away.
A. PROCTER.
j* If evil is personified in Satan, good is per-
sonified in Christ. If the Personification of
evil is to be conquered, he must be conquered
by the Personification of goodness. Christ and
His cleansing blood, Christ and the Grace of
His Spirit and His Sacraments, Christ and the
virtues which He creates in man, are more than a
match for evil, whether in the devil or in the world,
whether in ourselves or in others. His patience
is stronger than the world's violence, His gentle-
ness than its brutal rudeness, His humility than its
lofty scorn, His divine charity than its cruelty and
hatred. CANON LIDDON.
133
OCTOBER
PI Haunting gloom and flitting shades,
Ghastly shapes, away !
Christ is rising, and pervades
Highest Heaven with day.
He with His bright spear the night
Dazzles and pursues ;
Earth wakes up, and glows with light
Of a thousand hues.
BREVIARY.
And this is the writing that was written, Mene,
Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.
Tekel ; thou art weighed in the balances, and art
found wanting. DANIEL v. 25, 27.
Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou
hast paid the uttermost farthing.
S. MATTHEW V. 26.
FPtii When a man is weighed and found wanting,
his heaviest punishment consists in the want-
ing the not having and the not being that
which is essential to the dignity and enjoyment of
existence. When purity, worth, honor, rectitude,
and love are gone out of the soul, there is no need
of further punishment. The wrath of God is com-
plete in the mere absence of these things. ... In
God's eye we pass for what we are, and only that.
We cannot be more or less. We cannot weight the
scales, nor bind down the beam, nor wrest it from
134
OCTOBER
its pivot, nor alter the score. A fearful weighing !
And the hand comes out on the wall to write down
the results. The conscience sees it. " Wanting,"
"Tekel." It is the doom of dooms. Weighed,"
it is the law of laws. . . . But God takes no techni-
cal advantage of his children. He considereth our
infirmities, He remembereth that we are dust. His
eye pierces beyond the action to the inmost motive.
There is a hidden worth and beauty in many a heart
where the world cannot see it ; but God sees it
and weighs it. He does not stand by the stream,
but at the fountain. The good we mean, though
it be not done, if it be in our hearts to do it, in his
sight it is done and weighed.
DR. GEORGE PUTNAM.
P rav Rome put up her poniard,
And Sparta sheathe the sword ;
Be none too prompt to punish,
And cast indignant word.
No crime can outspeed Justice,
Who, resting, seems delayed
Full faith accord the angel
Who points the patient blade.
VICTOR HUGO.
jpjrt) In the present day it is not easy to find a
well-meaning man among our more earnest
thinkers who will not take upon himself to dispute
the whole system of redemption because he cannot
unravel the mystery of the punishment of sin. But
135
OCTOBER
can he unravel the mystery of the punishment of
no sin ? Can he entirely account for all that hap-
pens to a cab-horse ? Has he ever looked fairly
at the fate of one of those beasts as it is dying,
measured the work it has done, and the reward it has
got, put his hand upon the bloody wounds through
which its bones are piercing, and so looked up to
Heaven with an entire understanding of Heaven's
ways about the horse ? Yet the horse is a fact, no
dream ; and the dust it dies upon and the dogs that
eat it are facts; yonder happy person, whose the
horse was till its knees were broken over the hurdles,
who had an immortal soul to begin with, and wealth
and peace to help forward his immortality ; who
has also devoted the powers of his soul and body,
and wealth and peace, to the spoiling of houses, the
corruption of the innocent, and the oppression of
the poor, this happy person shall have no stripes,
shall have only the horse's fate of annihilation ; or
if other things are indeed reserved for him, Heaven's
kindness or omnipotence is to be doubted there-
fore. RUSKIN.
Unquestionably there is a revolt in the popu-
lar mind against the doctrine of rewards and
punishments. In these statements we surely have
an echo of the flabby sentimentalism, the indiscrim-
inate mashing together of right and wrong as Car-
lyle calls it, which is the substance of the Gospel,
according to J. J. Rousseau. The connection be-
tween wrong-doing and suffering and right-doing
and blessedness is of the very essence of the moral
136
OCTOBER
law. The categorical imperative of duty means an
obligation which it is our supreme good to obey,
our supreme evil to disobey. There is something,
writes Kant, in the idea of our practical reason
which accompanies the transgression of an ethical
mandate, namely, its punishableness.
QUARTERLY REVIEW.
The New Testament is, as its name imports,
a covenant. It is not an offer of uncondi-
tional pardon, for pardon is reconciliation, and God
is conditioned by Himself. "Draw nigh to me,
and I will draw nigh to you," saith the Lord.
Mercy is infinite and unconditional ; pardon is not.
Your own will, your own sin, can say, No. The
Prodigal could not prevent the Infinite Love follow-
ing the lost sheep into the wilderness, or searching,
though with the besom of affliction, for the spiritual
gold recklessly cast away ; but the moment in which
he came to himself, and said, " I will arise and go to
my father," depended upon changes within his own
spirit. . . . God alone has all the tenderness, and
nothing of the weakness, of a Father. With Him
alone there is unmeasured Goodness, but no le-
niency, no mitigation of holy Law. Leniency, relaxa-
tion of Law, is ever a confession of weakness, of lia-
bility to err. With God the inviolableness of Law
is the bond of His Goodness ; for His laws being in
themselves the highest expression of His wisdom
and His loving-kindness, not to execute but to relax
them would show the absence of Mercy.
DR. J. H. THOM.
137
OCTOBER
Fffottt Though God be good and free be Heaven,
No force divine can love compel ;
And, though the song of sins forgiven
May sound through lowest hell,
The sweet persuasion of His voice
Respects thy sanctity of will ;
He giveth day : thou hast thy choice
To walk in darkness still.
What if thine eye refuse to see,
Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome fail,
And thou a willing captive be,
Thyself thy own dark jail ?
WHITTIER.
As for purposes of knowledge it is appointed
us to believe that the sun which has risen to-
day will rise to-morrow ; so, for the ends of duty, it
is given us to feel that sin has a bitter fruit to ripen,
and that having sown the wind we shall reap the
whirlwind. . . . Not one consequence which He
has annexed to wrong-doing will fail to appear with
relentless punctuality : no miracle will interpose to
conduct away the lightning of retribution. Within
that realm of law and nature, He is inexorable, and
has put the freedom of pity quite away. . . . But it
is otherwise with respect to the soul and person of
the sinner himself : the sentiments of God towards
him are not bound : and if, while the deed of the
past is an irrevocable transgression, the temper of
the present is one of surrender and return, there is
138
OCTOBER
nothing to sustain the Divine aversion or hinder
the outflow of infinite pity. Free as our soul is
to come back and cry at the gate ; so free is He to
open and fold us gently to his heart again.
DR. J. MARTINEAU.
] Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet
they grind exceeding small,
Though with patience He stands waiting, with
exactness grinds He all.
LONGFELLOW.
From this sinful heart of mine,
To thy bosom I would flee ;
I am not my own, but Thine,
" God be merciful to me ! "
There is one beside Thy throne,
And my only hope and plea
Are in Him, and Him alone,
" God be merciful to me ! "
He my cause will undertake,
My interpreter will be ;
He 's my all and for His sake,
" God be merciful to me ! "
J. S. B. MONSELL.
139
FOR THE MONTH OF
NOVEMBER
Atonement
HP HE chastisement of our peace was upon him ;
and with his stripes we are healed.
ISAIAH liii. 5.
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the
just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.
I PETER iii. 1 8.
He is the propitiation for our sins.
i JOHN ii. 2.
ft Christ being the transcendent manifestation of
God in human life ; we have in the judgments
of Christ the sort of judgment that we are ulti-
mately to expect. . . . There is no redemption save
through suffering for another's sin, and the mother,
the patriot, and the pastor illustrate this. There
can be no proper conception of God which is with-
out an idea of his suffering for the sin of mankind.
DR. LYMAN ABBOTT.
140
NOVEMBER
III An expiring world always breathes its last and
expiates its faults in the arms of a saint,
this is an invariable law of history. The purest of
the race has to bear their faults, and the punish-
ment devolves on the innocent, whose crime is the
carrying on of a system condemned to perish, and
the cloaking with his virtues the long-continued in-
justice that oppresses his people. MICHELET.
ftj The flash that struck thy tree no more
To shelter thee lets Heaven's blue floor
Shine where it never shone before.
The cry wrung from thy spirit's pain
May echo on some far-off plain,
And guide a wanderer home again.
It may be that in some great need,
Thy life's poor fragments are decreed
To help build up a lofty deed.
A. PROCTER.
fo There breathes through every page [of the Life
of Laurence Oliphant] the upward longing of a
heart that groans under the pressure of sin as most
men groan under the pressure of pain. Perhaps
there will always be associated with this longing
a hope, more or less vague, which to the average
mind must take the aspect of fanaticism or insanity ;
the hope for some physical aid or symbol of this re-
generative process, some outward and visible sign
of the inward and spiritual grace which is to heal
141
NOVEMBER
the sick soul and not the soul only. Our Church
preserves this hope in its purest form and associates
it with the bequest of our Lord, but many accept it
who hardly see the full bearing of the sacramental
belief, who even recoil from any other expression
of the same idea as low, gross superstition.
JULIA WEDGWOOD.
jjj At every stage in the process which is gener-
ally summed up in the one word, Atonement,
we are in presence of forces which issue from in-
finity and pass out of our sight even while we
are contemplating their effects. . . . Whatever the
ultimate mysteries of the death of Christ may be,
it is certain that it has had power to convince men
of forgiveness, and to give them a new life. . . .
The death of Christ is, in the first place, to be
regarded as propitiatory. ... St. Bernard said,
" Not His death, but His willing acceptance of
death, was pleasing to God." The Atonement is
undoubtedly a mystery, but all forgiveness is a
mystery. The Atonement undoubtedly transgresses
the strict law of exact retribution, but all forgive-
ness transgresses it. ... It may be true that
" punishment cannot be borne by any one but the
sinner," and therefore it may be right not to call
Christ's sufferings punishment, but it is certainly
not true that the sufferings which result from sin
cannot be borne by any one but the sinner : every
day demonstrates the falsity of such an assertion.
REV. ARTHUR LYTTELTON.
142
NOVEMBER
foil A voice upon the midnight air,
Where Kedron's moonlit waters stray,
Weeps forth, in agony of prayer,
" O Father, take this cup away ! "
Ah ! thou who sorrowest unto death,
We conquer in thy mortal fray ;
And Earth, for all her children saith,
" O God ! take not this cup away ! "
ANONYMOUS.
of t&e SottI
My soul is full of trouble.
PSALM Ixxxviii. 3.
Now is my soul troubled. s. JOHN xii. 27.
I am not alone, because the Father is with me.
s. JOHN xvi. 32.
Joy cometh in the morning. PSALM xxx. 5.
If In every earnest life, there are weary flats to
tread, with the heavens out of sight, no sun,
no moon, and not a tint of light upon the path
below; when the only guidance is the faith of
brighter hours, and the secret Hand we are too
numb and dark to feel. . . . Tell me not that these
undulations of the soul are the mere instability of
enthusiasm and infirmity. Did not the Son of
God himself, the very type of our humanity, expe-
rience them more than all ? Did He not quit the
daily path, now for a Transfiguration, and now for
a Gethsemane ? Did not his voice burst into the
H3
NOVEMBER
exclamation, " I beheld Satan as lightning fall from
heaven," yet also confess, " Now is my soul
troubled " ? Ah no ! those intermittent movements
are the sign of divine gifts, not of human weakness.
God has so arranged the chronometry of our spirits
that there shall be thousands of silent moments
between the striking hours.
DR. JAMES MARTINEAU.
j* We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon ;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and
quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly ! yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost forever.
It is the same, for be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free ;
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow ;
Naught may endure but mutability.
SHELLEY.
fl Thou hast turned my heaviness into joy : thou
hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with
gladness. PSALM xxx. 12.
Here is described a change, complete, and more
or less sudden, from sadness to joy. David has
escaped a danger which had brought him very near
to death ; and now he is thankful and exultant.
His words are in keeping with what Christians
feel, as they pass from the last days of Holy Week
into the first hours of Easter.
CANON LIDDON.
144
NOVEMBER
|| We cannot kindle when we will
The fire which in the heart resides ;
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides.
But tasks in hours of insight willed
Can be in hours of gloom fulfilled.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
ji\l Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps and the nerves prick
And tingle ; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low, dark verge of life,
The twilight of eternal day.
TENNYSON.
Plfj Sweet thought of God, now do thy work
As thou hast done before ;
Wake up, and tears will wake with thee,
And the dull mood be o'er.
The very thinking of the thought,
Without or praise or prayer,
Gives light to know and life to do,
And marvellous strength to bear.
I bless Thee, Lord, for this kind check
To spirits over free,
145
NOVEMBER
And for all things that make me feel
More helpless need of Thee.
FABER.
JFate
pjj O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be
ere thou be quiet? Put up thyself into thy
scabbard, rest, and be still.
How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given
it a charge against Ashkelon, and against the sea
shore ? There hath he appointed it.
JEREMIAH Xlvii. 6, 7.
If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy
day, the things which belong unto thy peace ! But
now they are hid from thine eyes.
s. LUKE xix. 42.
j*j)l The Mohammedans say that each man's des-
tiny is written on his forehead. It is written
behind his forehead, in his brain. When God, by
his providence, causes us to be born with a certain
organic structure, gives us a specific education by
place, time, and circumstances, He provides for each
of us a distinct calling and election. He elects us,
not to a place in the other world, but to a work in
this world. Each of us has something to do for
Him. Our business is to find out what that work
is, and to do it. Our power and our freedom con-
sist not in doing anything and everything, but that
very something we are made for. We are free to
accept or reject our destiny, but not free to invent
any other. DR. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.
146
NOVEMBER
Shakespeare always leans on the force of
Fate, as it urges the final evil; and dwells
with infinite bitterness on the power of the wicked,
and the infinitude of result dependent seemingly on
little things. A fool brings the last piece of news
from Verona, and the dearest lives of its noble
houses are lost ; they might have been saved if the
sacristan had not stumbled as he walked. Othello
mislays his handkerchief, and there remains nothing
for him but death. Hamlet gets hold of the wrong
foil, and the rest is silence. Edmund's runner is a
moment too late at the prison, and the feather will
not move at Cordelia's lips. Salisbury, a moment
too late at the tower, and Arthur lies on the stones
dead. Goneril and I ago have, on the whole, much
of their own way in this world Shakespeare sees,
though they come to a bad end. RUSKIN.
Vt)iti ^ we must accept Fate, we are not less
compelled to affirm liberty, the significance
of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power
of character. . . . " The doer must suffer," said the
Greeks. " God himself cannot procure good for the
wicked," said the Welsh triad. . . . Man cannot
blink the free-will. To hazard the contradiction
freedom is necessary. If you please to plant your-
self on the side of Fate, and say Fate is all, then
we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of man.
Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and act-
ing in the soul. Intellect annuls Fate. 'T is the
best use of Fate to teach a datal courage. Go
face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's
147
NOVEMBER
house, or the burglar in your own, or what danger
lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded
by the cherubim of Destiny. EMERSON.
Pl Oh ! call it Providence or fate,
The Sphinx propounds the riddle still,
That Man must bear and expiate
Loads of involuntary ill :
So shall Endurance ever hold
The foremost rank 'mid human needs,
Not without faith that God can mould
To good the dross of evil deeds.
LORD HOUGHTON.
j Imminent perdition is not usually driven away
by words of warning. Didactic Destiny has
other methods in store ; or these would fail always.
Such words should, nevertheless, be uttered, when
they dwell truly in the soul of any man. Words
are hard, are importunate; but how much harder
the importunate events they foreshadow ! Here
and there a human soul may listen to the words,
who knows how many human souls? whereby the
importunate events, if not diverted and prevented,
will be rendered less hard. CARLYLE.
ffli I said farewell ;
I stepped across the cracking earth and knew
'T would yawn behind me. I must walk right on.
If I can never live like him on faith
In glorious morrows, I am resolute.
148
NOVEMBER
No, on the close-thronged spaces of the earth
A battle rages : Fate has carried me
'Mid the thick arrows : I will keep my stand,
Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breast
To pierce another : oh, 't is written large,
The thing I have to do.
GEORGE ELIOT.
For here have we no continuing city, but we
seek one to come. HEBREWS xiii. 14.
Arise and depart for this is not your rest.
MICAH ii. 10.
Set your affection on things above, not on things
on the earth. COLOSSIANS iii. 2.
The fashion of this world passeth away.
I CORINTHIANS vii. 31.
When persons, either from thoughtfulness
of mind, or from intellectual activity, begin
to contemplate the visible state of things into which
they are born, then forthwith they find it a maze and
a perplexity. It is a riddle which they cannot solve.
It seems full of contradictions and without a drift.
. . . Are we to look at all things in a gay and
mirthful way ? or in a melancholy way ? in a de-
sponding or a hopeful way ? . . . What is given us
by revelation to estimate and measure this world
by? the crucifixion of the Son of God. His
cross has put its true value upon everything which
we see, upon all fortunes, all advantages, all ranks,
149
NOVEMBER
all dignities, all pleasures; upon the lust of the
flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
It has set a price upon the excitements, the rivalries,
the hopes, the fears, the desires, the efforts, the
triumphs, of mortal man. ... In the Cross, and
Him who hung upon it, all things meet ; all things
subserve it, all things need it. He was lifted up
upon it, that He might draw all men and all things
unto Him. CARDINAL NEWMAN.
It has often been remarked that in the ma-
jority of genuine national songs there is a
prevalence of the melancholy, the plaintive, and the
aspiring. Aspiration is an innate feeling in man,
inseparable from his inmost nature. Man's aspira-
tions have been mingled with a feeling of sadness
for the loss of innocence ; and these two radical
feelings of the human heart, aspiration and sadness,
have ever pervaded all genuine national poetry.
So universal a lament over the loss and ruin of the
original beauty of life must date from a time ante-
cedent to that of the history of individual nations :
it can but be the echo of a feeling which has pos-
sessed not this or that nation, but the human race.
This note of sadness is the keynote of the earliest
history, and runs in various forms through the old-
est national traditions. PROFESSOR LASSAULX.
jflft Somewhere at every hour
The watchman on the tower
Looks forth, and sees the fleet
Approach of the hurrying feet
150
NOVEMBER
Of messengers that bear
The tidings of despair.
O Absalom, my son !
He goes forth from the door
Who shall return no more.
With him our joy departs ;
The light goes out in our hearts ;
In the Chamber over the Gate
We sit disconsolate.
O Absalom, my son
LONGFELLOW.
If every man's internal care
Were written on his brow,
How many would our pity share
Who raise our envy now ?
The fatal secret, when revealed,
Of every aching breast,
Would prove that only while concealed
Their lot appeared the best.
METASTASIO.
And so I argue about the world : if there
be a God, since there is a God, the human
race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calam-
ity. It is out of joint with the purposes of its Crea-
tor. This is a fact, a fact as true as the fact of
its existence ; and thus the doctrine of what is theo-
logically called original sin becomes to me almost
NOVEMBER
as certain as that the world exists, and as the exist-
ence Of God. CARDINAL NEWMAN.
The flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies ;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts, and then flies ;
What is this world's delight ?
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright.
SHELLEY.
Earth seems to make a sound in places lone,
Sleeps through the day, but wakes at night
to moan ;
Shunning our confidence, as if we were
A guilty burden it could hardly bear.
The winds can never sing but they must wail;
Waters lift up sad voices in the vale ;
One mountain-hollow to another calls
With broken cries of plaining waterfalls.
The sea, unmated creature, tired and lone,
Makes on its desolate sands eternal moan :
Lakes, on the calmest days, are ever throbbing
Upon their pebbly shores with petulant sobbing.
The clouds in heaven their placid motions borrow
From the funereal tread of men in sorrow ;
Or, when they scud across the stormy day,
Mimic the flight of hosts in disarray.
152 FABER.
NOVEMBER
Is it not strange, the darkest hour
That ever dawn'd on sinful earth
Should touch the heart with softer power
For comfort, than an angePs mirth ?
That to the Cross the mourner's eye should turn
Sooner than where the stars of Christmas burn ?
Yet so it is : for duly there
The bitter herbs of earth are set,
Till tempered by the Saviour's prayer,
And with the Saviour's life-blood wet,
They turn to sweetness, and drop holy balm,
Soft as imprison'd martyr's death-bed calm.
KEBLE.
153
FOR THE MONTH OF
DECEMBER
pf OR unto us a child is born : and his name
" shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The
mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince
of Peace. ISAIAH ix. 6.
And the work of righteousness shall be peace.
ISAIAH xxxii. 17.
Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be
called the children of God. s. MATTHEW v. 9.
It It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold :
" Peace to the earth, good-will to men
From Heaven's all-gracious King ! "
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.
DR. E. H. SEARS.
154
DECEMBER
tfj The province of Tuzulutlan was called by the
Spaniards the Land of War. They had idols
and human sacrifices, and were desperate fighters.
This it was that Las Casas chose for his experi-
ment. Let us note well his manner of proceeding,
for there are those to-day who maintain that the
type of character which Victor Hugo has sketched
in Monseigneur Bienvenu is not calculated to
achieve success in the world. The example of Las
Casas, however, tends to confirm us in the opinion
that when combined with sufficient intelligence, that
type of character is the most indomitable and mas-
terful of all. And in this I seem to see good prom-
ise for the future of humanity. The wisdom of the
serpent, when wedded to the innocence of the dove,
is of all things the most winning and irresistible, as
Las Casas now proceeded to prove. . . . Before
another year had elapsed the Indians had volun-
tarily destroyed their idols, renounced cannibalism,
and promised to desist from warfare unless actually
invaded. . . . The work was permanent. Las Ca-
sas had come, he had seen, and he had conquered ;
and not a drop of human blood had been shed !
... So when the stern conqueror and lord of Gua-
temala, coming forth to greet Las Casas and the
Indian king, took off his plumed and jewelled cap,
and bent his head in reverence, it seems to me one
of the beautiful moments in history, one of the
moments that comfort us with the thought of what
may yet be done with frail humanity when the spirit
of Christ shall have come to be better understood.
JOHN FISKE.
155
DECEMBER
|fo Robert extended his forgiveness to all sinners.
Such was the gentleness and innocence of the
first Capetian king. It was in the reign of this
good Robert that the dreaded year one thousand
came and passed away ; and it seemed as if Divine
wrath had been disarmed by this simple-minded
man, who was as an incarnation of the peace of
God. MICHELET.
fo Bernard was lying upon his sick-bed at Clair-
vaux in the last year of his life on earth, when
news came of a terrible contest raging at Metz,
between the burghers of the town and the neighbor-
ing nobles. Once more, and now for the last time,
the sovereign and invincible will lifted into a tem-
porary vigor the wasted and dissolving frame, and
the abbot went forth, in uttermost feebleness, to the
banks of the Moselle. The exasperated nobles
would not even hear him, but broke up their camp,
and went elsewhere, to avoid the spell which they
feared his speech might cast upon them. But they
could not avoid, and could not resist, the impres-
sion which even his presence made. August and
saintly, he was to them not so much an earthly
counsellor as a messenger from on high, and he
waited, in absolute confidence, for the end. One
of his visions came at night to encourage him, and
he said to his companions, " Be not dismayed,
there are many difficulties, but the desired peace is
near." In fact, at midnight came a message of
penitence and reconciliation from the fierce and
furious men of war. Terms of truce were proposed
DECEMBER
and accepted, and after a few days a firm and last-
ing peace was established. DR. R. s. STORRS.
jj( Christ's death is the triumph of peace in the
spiritual world. Peace among men is secured,
because the Cross is the centre of the regenerated
world as of the moral universe. CANON LIDDON.
foil From the dark future through long generations,
The sounds of war grow fainter and then
cease ;
And, like a bell with solemn sweet vibrations,
I hear once more the voice of Christ say, " Peace ! "
Peace ! and no longer from its brazen portals,
The blast of war's great organ shakes the skies ;
But, beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise.
LONGFELLOW.
lobe to (SoU an* JHan
ftlii We love him because he first loved us.
I JOHN IV. 19.
And this commandment have we from him, That
he who loveth God love his brother also.
I JOHN iv. 21.
Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me ? He saith
unto him, Yea, Lord ; thou knowest that I love thee.
He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.
S. JOHN xxi. 1 6.
157
DECEMBER
l There is a time when religion is only felt as a
bridle that checks us, and then comes another
time when it is a sweet and penetrating life-blood,
which sets in motion every fibre of the soul, expands
the understanding, gives us the Infinite for our
horizon, and makes all things clear to us.
LACORDAIRE.
The love of Jesus is not a fancy, not a dream.
If the solid earth is real, it is real. The mother
may forget her child, the lover his well-beloved, but
the children of men will never cease to be drawn
to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He asked for this
love ; it is, I may say, the only thing for which
He asks, for in it all else is contained. He fore-
saw that it would be given to Him ; that it would
burn through the long night of ages ; that in every
country and all future time the most generous and
loving natures would turn to Him as the eye seeks
the light. What will the Son of Man do with this
love ? He will have us love Him, doubtless, because
He is the best, the worthiest object of our love ;
but to what practical test and use will He put the
exalted and boundless devotion of His followers ?
He will take our hearts and give them to all who
suffer and are weary and heavy-laden. The sinner,
the beggar, the leper, the slave, are the brothers of
Jesus, and whatsoever we do for them is proof of
our love for Him. BISHOP SPALDING.
1 The love of Jesus reproduces itself in the lives
of His working and suffering children. In
158
DECEMBER
some shape they are ever giving themselves to God
and for their fellow-men. True love is no thin dis-
embodied sentiment. Love asserts its presence in
a practical, visible way, when once it really lives.
CANON LIDDON.
r|{ Fast, that you may give to the poor what you
deny yourself ; deny yourself, that you may
give ; contemn luxuries, or, at times, even comforts,
that you may give; give up from time to time
enjoyments ; think what luxuries you may abandon ;
what superfluities you may part with ; what habitual
self-indulgence, if so be, you may break off ; how
you may diminish your expenses upon self, and
enlarge your charity to your brethren, and in them
" lend unto the Lord." . . . Relinquish what you
wish, and practise what you wish not ; make it
your object so to do, in order to school yourselves
and have the habit of self-denial. DR. PUSEY.
iti We continually talk of taking up our cross,
as if the only harm in a cross was the weight
of it ; as if it was only a thing to be carried instead of
to be crucified upon. " They that are His have
crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts."
. . . Does not that mean that they are ready to
leave houses, lands, and kindreds yes, and life
if need be ? Life ! some of us are ready enough
to throw that away, joyless as we have made it.
But, "station in Life" how many of us are ready
to quit that ? Is it not always the great objection
when there is question of finding something useful
159
DECEMBER
to do, " We cannot leave our stations in Life " ?
. . . Levi's station in life was the receipt of cus-
tom ; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee ; and Paul's,
the ante-chambers of the High-Priest, " which
station in Life " each had to leave, with brief
notice. RUSKIN.
Plfo O ! our Saviour ; of ourselves we cannot love
Thee, cannot follow Thee, cannot cleave unto
Thee ; but Thou didst come down that we might
love Thee, didst ascend that we might follow Thee,
didst bind us around Thee as Thy girdle, that we
might be held fast unto Thee. Thou Who hast
loved us, make us to love Thee ; Thou Who hast
sought us, make us to seek Thee ; be Thou Thyself
the Way, that we may find Thee, and be found in
Thee, our only Hope, and our everlasting Joy.
DR. PUSEY.
CJe Potoer of JattI; an* lobe
jft All things are yours ; and ye are Christ's ; and
Christ is God's. I CORINTHIANS iii. 22, 23.
Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought
righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the
mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire,
escaped the edge of the sword.
HEBREWS xi. 33, 34.
pfol St. Bernard of Clairvaux, naturally a devout,
poetic recluse, became the most practical mas-
ter of affairs appearing on the Continent ; . . . intent
160
DECEMLBER
on making the entire Church in Europe what he
felt that it should be, the living witness for the
Master, the guide to the erring, the refuge of the
oppressed, a celestial helper to all disturbed but
faithful souls. ... I think of him in his physical
weakness, raising armies, subduing nobles, curb-
ing kings, directing the Church, and he represents
the invincible mind which more and more was to
govern and pervade the whole frame of society. I
think of him in his personal spirit, contemplative,
devout, intensely practical, yet marvellously lofty,
self-sacrificing, sincere, and passionately devoted to
what he esteemed the noblest ends, and he repre-
sents the consecrated heart, humble, intrepid, and
near to the Master's, from which civilization must
always take its finest and divinest force. . . . The
spiritual sublimed the natural in him. Celestial
forces broke through his life into the dark secular
spheres. From worlds on high came the supplies
of his amazing and invincible energy. . . . One
does not know where else to look for a more lofty
and shining exhibition of the power of Faith as
a subjective spiritual force, and of the enthusiasm
which it inspires. DR. R. s. STORKS.
ffoli The first foundation of any spiritual work
is a detached heart. Neither birth, fortune,
talent, nor genius exceeds in value a detached heart.
LACORDAIRE.
The things that are impossible to man are
possible to God ; the things that are impos-
161
DECEMBER
sible to man without God are not only possible
but natural to man when he cooperates with God
working in him. You may gaze forever on an
example set before you, on a goodness which, if
gained, would be the kingdom of heaven within
you, and yet be nothing but a gazer, because your
will is too feeble in resolve, your soul too untrue in
impulse and in love to aim at and execute the work
proposed. ... In spiritual things we are both
instruments and agents ; we work with our souls,
and to achieve higher or severer work, our soul, our
personal power, must be recast, making what before
was impossible to become possible through new
indwellings of God. No man can do the works
of Christ unless Christ be in him. DR. j. H. THOM.
l The charge of the new institution was given to
a poor priest without birth and without fortune
who was to become celebrated in the world under the
name of S. Vincent de Paul. That work was not
sufficient for the ardor of his charity. The young, the
sick, the ignorant, the galley-slaves, all who suffered
in mind or body seemed to call S. Vincent to their
aid ; he founded in 161 7, in the little parish of Bresse,
the charitable association of the Servants of the
Poor, which became in Paris the Congregation of
the Servants of the Sick Poor, and the cradle of the
Sisters of Charity. They will have, said S. Vincent,
for a convent only the houses of the sick, for a
chapel only the church of their parish, for a cloister
only the streets of the city or the halls of the hos-
pitals, for their fence only obedience, for their bars
162
DECEMBER
only the fear of God. Eighteen thousand daughters
of S. Vincent de Paul testify to-day to the wise
foresight 'of their founder ; his rules have endured
like his work and the necessities of the poor.
GUIZOT.
yp Amidst Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt,
A high-born princess, servant of the poor,
Sweetening with gracious words the food she dealt
To starving throngs at Wartburg's blazoned door.
Death found her busy at her task : one word
Alone she uttered as she paused to die,
" Silence ! " then listened even as one who
heard
With song and wing the angels drawing nigh !
Now Fra Angelico's roses fill her hands,
And on Murillo's canvas, Want and Pain
Kneel at her feet. Her marble image stands
Worshipped and crowned in Marburg's holy fane.
WHITTIER.
Pjt Slow ages passed : and lo ! another came,
An English matron in whose simple faith
Nor priestly rule nor ritual had claim,
A plain uncanonized Elizabeth.
To melt the hearts that harshness turned to stone
The sweet persuasion of her lips sufficed,
And guilt, which only hate and fear had known,
Saw in her own the pitying love of Christ.
DECEMBER
So wheresoe'er the guiding Spirit went
She followed, finding every prison cell
It opened for her sacred as a tent
Pitched by Gennesaret or Jacob's well.
United now, the Briton and the Hun,
Each, in her own time, faithful unto death,
Live sister souls ! in name and spirit one,
Thuringia's saint and our Elizabeth !
WHITTIER.
Eepentante, Stepiratton, fHercp
]j*jj And the Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us. s. JOHN i. 14.
For God sent not his Son into the world to con-
demn the world ; but that the world through him
might be saved. s. JOHN iii. 17.
If any man sin, we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. i JOHN ii. i.
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be
conscious of none. Who is called " the man
according to God's own heart " ? David, the He-
brew king, had fallen into sins enough; blackest
crimes ; there was no want of sins. And thereupon
the unbelievers sneer and ask, "Is this your man
according to God's heart ? " The sneer, I must say,
seems to me but a shallow one. ... Of all acts, is
not, for a man, repentance the most divine ? The
deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious
consciousness of no sin, that is death. David's
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DECEMBER
life and history, as written for us in those Psalms
of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever
given of a man's moral progress and warfare here
below. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down
as into entire wreck ; yet a struggle never ended ;
ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable
purpose, begun anew. . . . That his struggle be a
faithful unconquerable one : that is the question
of questions. CARLYLE.
The one n ty si n which is beyond the reach
of Absolution, the one only sin which the
Precious Blood cannot absolve, is the sin that is
not repented of; that is the sole and only sin that
shall not be washed as white as snow.
CARDINAL MANNING.
Time's waters will not ebb, nor stay,
Power cannot change them, but Love may ;
What cannot be, Love counts it done.
Deep in the heart, her searching view
Can read where Faith is fix'd and true,
Through shades of setting life can see Heaven's
work begun.
Till as each moment wafts us higher,
By every gush of pure desire,
And high-breath'd hope of joys above,
By every secret sigh we heave,
Whole years of folly we outlive,
In His unerring sight who measures Life by Love.
KEBLE.
DECEMBER
Oh> wake then, ye that slumber on in this
torpor of evil habits and of sin ! Wake, be-
fore you are awakened by the trump of the archan-
gel ! . . . Hear the holy angels sing, " Glory to
God in the highest and on earth peace, good-will
towards men ; " see those bright and pure spirits
longing to be rejoined by you, and desiring your
coming ; and then look down on the passions which
are holding you captives, the desires which you are
serving, the cares and unsatisfied longings which
are destroying your peace, the petty troubles about
which you are repining, the petty gains, enjoyments,
for which you are bartering your souls, and then
say whether this be worthy of your new origin, your
second birth, whether this suits the character of the
sons of God and heirs of everlasting life, and make
your choice. DR. PUSEY.
flfoii I bore with thee long weary days and
nights,
Through many pangs of heart, through many tears ;
I bore with thee, thy hardness, coldness, slights,
For three-and-thirty years.
Who else had dared for thee what I have dared ?
I plunged the depth most deep from bliss above ;
I not My flesh, I not My spirit spared,
Give thou Me love for love.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI. v
The divine reason must forever manifest
itself anew in the lives of men, and that as
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DECEMBER
individuals. This atonement with God, this identi-
fication of the man with the truth, is not something
that can be done once for all, that can become his-
toric and traditional, a dead flower pressed between
the leaves of the family Bible, but must be renewed
in every generation, and in the soul of every man,
that it may be valid. . . . Dante had reached the
high altar where the miracle of transubstantiation
is wrought, itself also a type of the great conversion
that may be accomplished in our own nature (the
lower thing assuming the qualities of the higher),
not by any process of reason, but by the very fire of
the divine love. ... Had Dante merely made us
feel how petty the ambitions, sorrows, and vexations
of earth appear when looked down on from the
heights of our own character and the seclusion of
our own genius, or from the region where we com-
mune with God, he had done much : but he has
done far more ; he has shown us the way by which
that country far beyond the stars may be reached,
may become the habitual dwelling-place and for-
tress of our nature, instead of being the object of its
vague aspiration in moments of indolence.
LOWELL.
It is a noble thing, that Purgatorio, " Moun-
tain of Purification ; " an emblem of the no-
blest conception of that age. If Sin is so fatal, and
Hell is and must be so rigorous, awful, yet in Repent-
ance, too, is man purified ; Repentance is the grand
Christian act. It is beautiful how Dante works it
out. The tremolar del? onde, that " trembling " of
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the ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of
morning, dawning afar on the wandering Two, is
as the type of an altered mood. Hope has now
dawned ; never-dying Hope, if in company still
with heavy sorrow. They toil painfully up by that
winding steep, " bent-down like corbels of a build-
ing," some of them, crushed together so "for
the sin of pride ; " yet nevertheless in years, in
ages and aeons they shall have reached the top,
which is Heaven's gate, and by Mercy shall have
been admitted in. The joy too, of all, when one
has prevailed ; the whole mountain shakes with
joy, and a psalm of praise rises when one soul has
perfected repentance and got its sin and misery
left behind. CARLYLE.
I
] Art thou weary, art thou languid,
Art thou sore distrest ?
" Come to Me," saith One, " and, coming,
Be at rest ! "
Hath He marks to lead me to Him,
If He be my Guide ?
"In His feet and hands are wound-prints,
And His side."
Is there diadem, as monarch
That His brow adorns ?
" Yea; a crown, in very surety,
But of thorns ! "
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DECEMBER
If I find Him, if I follow,
What his guerdon here ?
" Many a sorrow, many a labor,
Many a tear ! "
If I ask Him to receive me,
Will He say me nay ?
" Not till earth, and not till heaven,
Pass away ! "
Finding, following, keeping, struggling,
Is he sure to bless ?
" Angels, martyrs, prophets, virgins,
Answer, Yes ! "
S. STEPHEN THE SABAITE, TR. BY NEALE.
When the word goes forth for dying,
Listen to my lonely crying ;
In death's dreadful hour delay not;
Jesu, come, be swift and stay not ;
Protect me, save, and set me free !
When by Thee my soul is bidden,
Let not then Thy face be hidden !
Lover, whom 't is life to cherish,
Shine, and leave me not to perish !
Bend from Thy cross and succor me !
S. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX,
TR. BY J. ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
laud 2Deo
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