Our Life Insurance Companies get abundance of patronage, though their rates are high; our Medical Doctors are numerous, though they will not employ their skill for nothing. (Alas, what expensive hunting after health is the main portion of modern biographies!) But here is Jesus Christ calling on you daily for His sake and God's sake as well as for your own, to come and ensure your life and health for ever; here He is, from day to day, waiting patiently in His own house to give meat and drink to all that want it (and who is without the need?) and yet many of you come here day by day, weakly of constitution, with chances of life but meagre indeed, and still day by day decline to become guests at the Lord's table! What, I ask, has bewitched the Catholics of these fearful times? Is it indeed a fact, as many great men suppose, that all strong faith, and all strong thought, have disappeared from among the masses, and that we have commenced to live some fearful machine-life without blood, or heat, or heart, or soul? In a heathen age, when the only sure good was the good of the present-all the future being wrapped around with doubt and perplexity—it was hardly wonderful if men adopted the rule, “eat, drink, for to-morrow we die," but in a Christian time, professing Christian beliefs, with these beliefs brought out and sanctioned by God so clearly, that even He, writing upon the skies, could hardly make them clearer, what shall we say of men who have a God in their midst whom they quietly ignore, a God lovingly

asking them to His table which they persistently decline! What are our modern Catholics looking for at all? Is there anything on the earth below, nay, anything in the heaven above, better than Jesus Christ? What food is so much wanted; what food can be had so cheaply; what food is so sweet to take as the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood? And yet most of you can seemingly afford to do without it. And this too though each one of you is weaker than the weakest reed, though against your weakness are banded together all the strength and all the cunning of hell, though on the same side with hell are fighting all the powers of the world, and all the powers of your flesh, though all the earth since Adam's fall, all its beauty and all its sweetness, has become one great gigantic temptation to hold down your hearts from the everlasting beauty and sweetness of God! Alas, my Brethren, there is only too large a likelihood that all our modern world has changed into one vast lunatic asylum-the poor madmen trying, each in some foolish, childish way of his own, to assuage their poor unrest-and that the sooner God makes an end of it the better for the name and fame of our lost humanity!

But, my Brethren, I shall yet say that from you I expect henceforth other and better things. On God's earth, and under God's heaven, there is no room for despondency, and very little room for grief. What has been done must remain as it is, but full time has been left you to do very differently. There is no

power to alter the bad past, but there is power to fashion the good future; and the good future may make amends for the bad past. So, my Brethren, begin to-day. Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation. By-and-by will your King come out, kind and gracious, generous and noble, as in the old times of Magdalen and the Adulteress, and Peter and the Thief. On this His altar will He sit, before your very eyes, for forty hours. Round about Him shall we gather all our best of earthly offerings. Our flowers will bloom, and our lights will gleam, and our music peal, and our incense smoke, to do Him honour. Only little have we power to give, but, little or great, the Man of Calvary shall have it all. And while He looks down with His gentle smile on all our lights, and all our flowers; and while He beckons lovingly towards Him the angels who would otherwise lie prostrate for ever on the altar steps, He shall (shall He not?) looking further down beyond the altar-rails behold a sight that will bring the joyblood to both His cheeks-even the sight of all your hearts lighted up and burning along these benches as so many lamps before His feet, as so many joyfires to show the world and the devil that your King has come! And while the forty hours are passing, you will feel (will you not?) that God, indeed, has visited His people; that the earth is fairer, and the skies brighter, and your own bodies more lightsome than they were on yesterday or the day before. And when the forty hours are passed you will look

(will you not?) with new eyes on the world about you, feeling at length that it is holy ground, a sacred place where the Lord is dwelling, a place wherein men should live with a solemn cheerfulness, solemn because God is with them, cheerful because He is from first to last a God of love. And then, my Brethren, what more? Why only this, that you will have solved that riddle of the universe which the wisdom of the wise, by itself, could never solve,—knowing how to live lives of genial, graceful goodness in an age of deepening and evil gloom. To you it will matter not that this earth is a vale of tears, for, right across the tears you will see the sunshine from God's countenance transfiguring them all into bright and precious things. Nor will you be much disheartened when you find out, as all of you will find out in time, that Sin is beating God almost everywhere she meets Him, for you will remember that here there is the tender touch of the divine mercy, and (failing that) hereafter the swift spears of the divine revenge. Nor will you much care for the wars and rumours of wars that oppress the world, for you will be rather thinking of that terrible trumpet which will bring a sudden and settled stillness over all. Nor will you be much afraid of the sorrows that oppress yourselves, for your eyes will gladden as, beyond the sorrows and the crosses, they see the crown. Neither will the certain gloom of your grave appal you, for you will be ever looking to it, not by any means forgetful of the voice to call you up therefrom, but with that

word of Jesus, "whoso eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has everlasting life, and I will raise him up on the last day," for ever and for ever in the ringing of your ears. And so, out beyond all this confusion which men call Life, beyond all its sin and all its sorrow, beyond all its clouds and all its tempests, beyond all its roaring and all its raining-out, too, beyond that dark doorway, which men call Death, you will see clearly your great reward. And that reward you will await with noble patience, walking on calm, quiet, fearless, steady, down all this nighttime of the present, expecting cheerily that blessed day-time of the future, when Jesus will put aside His Sacramental covering, to show you His hands, and feet, and eyes, and lips, and heart, and soul, and Godhead in His Kingdom, and your Kingdom, with His Father, and your Father for evermore.