ways. It is their own affair, and-God's. If they want to get damned, it is a bad, a rather foolish business, but hell is big enough to hold them all. But ye! ye want no place, do ye? among the mocking devils and the pitiless fires-ye want no place, do ye? behind the brazen gates that shut out peace and rest and hope for ever, that for ever shut in the useless moans, the improfitable wailings, the blinding, bitter, but barren tears of the damned! Shout then, I say, for mercy to the Son of David. Ask His blessed light to see things as they should be seen. Ask Him to show you the solemn meaning of your position here; that this is your schooling-time, a short three score and ten wherein to fit yourselves for a loftier place and a nobler manhood; no time for boyish idling; no time for boyish trifling; but a time when whatever a man's hand has to do, it must do quickly. Ask Him to fill your hearts, and to bow your foreheads with the awful thought that the Lord is nigh. Ask Him to give you saving foresight of the dread secrets which death will uncover. Ask Him, most of all, to lend you some little glimpse of that crushing love which brought Himself, the strong one, to weakness, and suffering, and death, and shame! Nor let your beggar's cry stop there. There is, my brethren, one little fact which few men remember, but which you must ask Jesus to whisper in your ears; the fact namely, that all God's visible creatures were made for you, not only in the low sense of ministering to your bodies' wants, but in the

high sense of ministering to your souls' salvation. For, my Brethren, even the dumb things of God, are placed about you as remembrancers of Him. The sun above is there, not merely your light-bringer and your heat-giver, but there as the fiery sign of God's great eye overlooking all your ways; the stars are no poor night-lamps in God's city of the world, for the Lord has fixed them in their far places to remind you how the angels watch over your blackest hours; the skies themselves are no bare heaps of cloud, no bare expanses of colour, but better far, the veil of many dyes before God's holy of holies; nay, what am I saying? what need to talk of sun, and stars, and sky, when every tree, and flower, and rock, and root, and sod, has the finger of God upon it, and the presence of God within it, was God's handiwork in the beginning, will be his home and temple for ever to the end? That's what I meant when I spoke of the solemn meaning of your position here. And springing out of that is what I mean now when I tell you to lift your voices up to Jesus, and to make your whole lives ring with the beggar's cry, "Lord, make me see!"

And not through life alone let that be your cry. When the twelve hours are over, and the night has come, and death, the King's messenger, beckons you away, then be your shout to Jesus strong and earnest and hopeful, as it was in your lustiest days. Cry out as the blind man cried, and heed not, as the blind man did not heed, them who would stay your vehemence, or choke your voice! Cry out, and let death,

the King's messenger, know you for what you are, even to the last one of the king's valient men! Cry out, if not with the lips, then with the unconquered heart, and let the angry devils see that, with God, your helper, you can beat them in your weakest hour! Cry out bravely, trustfully, strongly, and heed ye me, the Lord's voice will whisper in your ears, and the Lord's finger will come upon your eyes, and when the eyes of flesh are closed other eyes will be opened, and blindness will be no more, and wayside begging will be no more, and you will see, at last, heaven and its company, the Lord and His glory, through all the days that the Lord will be!

II.

ALL SAINTS' DAY.*

"Post hæc vidi turbam magnam quam dinumerare nemo poterat ex omnibus gentibus et tribubus et populis et linguis stantes ante thronum amicti stolis albis et palmæ in manibus eorum."-APOCALYPSE, vii. 9.

Ir is, my Brothers, a saying both very ancient and very true that man's life upon earth is a warfare. But, though very ancient and very true, it is yet a saying not often realized in these days. These are days characterized above all by a pleasant habit of viewing things only on the sunny side, or at all events by a languid fashionable carelessness about considering the side that is not sunny. That pondering of the heart, without which the land is desolate, troubles us no more; this world's weight which men used to find to find so crushing is, for modern shoulders, but a slight affair; what Solomon could never do our modern men can do quite easily,-they rest contentedly in

* This sermon was preached in the Chapel of Maynooth College. It addressed itself to the audience really present on the occasion; that is to say, to the collected body of students; and it addressed itself to them alone.

pleasures of the present as though vanity of vanities

was not written upon them all.

And so, therefore,

even when they do not deny, they shrink sensitively from admitting that human life is, or should be, nothing more than one long battle.

Nevertheless, my Brothers, the truth of Job's old saying stands. The Church of earth is a Church militant, and the ideal Christian is a fighting man. The type of the Church is not Adam in paradise, but Adam among the thistles and thorns; is not Israel glad and singing her songs in Zion, but Israel bent and weeping by the waters; is Israel marching through the wilderness, and is not Israel resting in the promised land. Whether we think of it or not, the great battle of the two standards is always round about us. Between these two there can never be a moment's alliance, nay, not so much as a moment's truce. The army of the Church is eternally and essentially at war against the army of the devil. And with varying success. The Church, as a matter of course, is never beaten, but she is very often very sorely galled. She is never without strong fortresses and strong men to guard them, but she is often driven from fortresses that she relied on greatly, and deprived of men who would have done her good service in the day of danger. And so the war goes on, varying much but ceasing never; soldiers falling,

other soldiers filling up the ranks; swift advance and sullen retreat; the banner of the Cross now flying defiantly, now in doubtful danger, sometimes lowered,