with men from ours, for night and day are there sins to honour him; night and day his heart is gladdened by shameless ignorance in the Christian captains shameless cowardice in the Christian men; night and day, God help us, men are leaving this valley of the shadow, where, though tears be plentiful, they yet are passing, for that horrid pit where the tears that fall must fall for ever. And that being the case, what, I ask, is consequently the business of the leaders in God's army? Rest, contentment, idleness, the languid loitering and the soft music of peace, not the straight march and the strong trumpet shout of war? But what then of the noon-day murders and the shameless lusts, and the wholesale cheating, and the flagrant faithlessness, and the cruel hard-heartedness, and the wolfish calumny, and the monkey-spite, and the cool grey-headed contempt of justice and of God? Take away these, and then, if you please, to slumber! ye leaders of the people; then, if you please, let your swords be sheathed and your eyes be closed, but now!-why, the whole world is overrun with devils, and the stench of dead and rotting souls is laying waste whole cities that had sworn allegiance to the Lord! What then is your business, ye leaders of the people? What would Patrick do, or Kevin do, or Columbkille do, had their lives fallen upon our evil days? What would any, even the least, in the turba magna do, were God's mercy to send him now for a sample of Christian valour to us all? Brothers, you will know

what the answer must surely be. You well know that for Patrick, or Kevin, or Columbkille there would be no rest, no sheathing of the sword while a single soul was left to fight for. Take the lesson which that fact teaches, for that is your lesson from the Church to-day.

For, my Brothers, though the Church bids us rejoice (gaudeamus omnes says she in the Introit of her Mass to-day), though the Church bids us rejoice in this, the Feast-day of all her saints, still, mere rejoicing must not be the issue with us, as it certainly is not the end with her. The Church militant has but one end on earth, and that end is something very different from joy. Attempts are sometimes made to give her a look of mirth and triumph, but mirth and triumph do not well become her widow's weeds. Foolish people would have her robe herself in dainty dresses, but dainty dresses are for days of peace, and the Church has no chance of peace just yet. She is at every moment too much weighed down with sadness, too keenly alive to the sin and misery that cram the world, too closely watched, beset too sorely, to have any time for triumph simple and final. Such triumph she knows belongs to another world than ours, to another Church than she. However large her faith in the God that made her, she knows, only too bitterly does she know it, that she is the Church militant, and not the Church triumphant; that she is the Church with the dust of battle, and not the Church with the crown of victory; that she is the.

Church in exile, and not the Church at home; and that her sole business here is to lead and cheer her children on their life-long battle-march, till they all come where battling and bloodshedding will cease at last, where triumph, and the joys of triumph, will be given her for ever, where nation shall not rise up against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. And with that knowledge does she plan each festival throughout her year. Whether it be a day of mourning like to-morrow, or a day of joy like this, the purpose is the same. The purpose is our admonishment. The Church stops her march a moment, at one time to shout in joy over her crowned and triumphant soldiers, at another to wail in sorrow, but yet in hope, over her children yet lying in their prison of purging pain; but in one case and in the other the trumpet that gives utterance to her feeling for the dead, also gives utterance to her command for the living. And her command to-day is clear. She bids us look upward, as St. John looked, to the great army of loyal-hearted, triumphant saints; to remember that in the days of their flesh they had no better chances, no lighter enemies than we; to fill ourselves full of the dauntless spirit through which their victories were gained, and to record our oathidem trecenti juravimus-that even for the sake of the honoured dead with whom we claim spiritual, ay, and carnal kindred, no inch of ground shall be lost by us which their valour won; no devil's triumph over us shall bring disgrace upon God's great army;

no speck of dishonour shall stain the flag under which, God aiding, they beat the devils down!

And, my Brothers, if you want incentives to your valour, you have them in abundance. I am not going to tell you that by such valour, and by it alone, you will escape the hideous company of the devils and the damned. In its place that motive is a good one, but its place is not here. Neither am I going to remind you of a certain great, somewhat unstudied drama, acted nevertheless for a lesson to us all, wherein the curtain descends on a Man with a thorn-crown hanging on a hill. Here, where so much else is learned, Calvary and its story are not likely to be forgotten. Nor am I going to say that what we are bound to preach, we are bound also to practise; that these are no pagan times when a man might have one doctrine for the people, and the opposite doctrine for himself; that the priests of Jesus are not the Haruspices of Jove, hardly able to keep in the laughter as they met each other in the public ways. Neither am I going to warn you that we had better fight while we yet have time, for that we are surely nearing the awful stillness which will soon silence and settle all. It is very profitable to keep that in memory, but you are not likely to forget it, you with your own cemetery and your own dead lying ever within your walls. Nor am I going to describe for you that Heaven which the brave and the brave alone will have as an inheritance, for what no man can conceive is, I am used to think, what it is not for me to attempt de

scribing. Yet must I ask you to give one glance thereat, one glance at the Fair Land and Largepulchra terra et spatiosa-which we shall all, please God, come to know pretty well hereafter, to run your eyes over the company assembled there, and to say whether you think fellowship with that company a thing worth fighting for. Is it a little thing, think you, to be enrolled a member of that brotherhood of heroes, to walk with them, talk with them, see the splendour of their eyes, to know that they honour you as worthy of your high position, and to feel that their honour and their fellowship will remain to you as long as the pillars of heaven remain! But is that all? Not yet: that is much, but the crowning glory has yet to come. For, better still, your valour will introduce you to the heroic host, Michael at their head, who first stood up for the grand old cause; still better, to the stainless Woman whom the seven swords could not subdue; best of all, to the great Captain, glorious in His wounds, who will take your hand in His kindly hand and give you glorious welcome to the kingdom where His glory reigns. And so, the poor soldier who fell on his solitary outpost, of whom there will be no record in the books of men, whose tears were ever falling, whose heart was ever sore, whom the dear wise world cursed for a liar, laughed at for a fool, is come to be a crowned conqueror in the halls of heaven! God's familiars, honoured of the angels, worshipped of the Church, how will your hearts be able to stand it all! How