for; no solemn, awestruck faces, as of men who are marching on to judgment; no wild watching and fearful wrestling as of men whose march is beset with devils; ah, no! none of these, but, instead thereof, a dull, heartless, mechanical lip-service of the Lord, as though He were one of the graven things that have eyes and cannot see, hands and cannot strike; as though He may not at any moment touch them upon the shoulder and ask them what they are doing, now, with this life He gave them-what indolence they substitute for energy, what listlessness they put in place of labour; as though this were not fact, which even unbelievers have declared, that "Life is no thing of sport, and death is no thing of sport, and for all of us there is but one little life, one little chance, no second life, no second chance to any of us for evermore!"

Now, my Brethren, I do not suppose you will ask me to prove that the state of things I have been describing is a very bad state of things. I am sure that when I characterize it as one of the worst states possible you will follow me with entire willingness and entire sincerity. Nor, as Christians, can you well refuse. For, if there be one evil more than another opposed to the spirit of Christianity, opposed to the most essential object which Christianity aims at in its action upon men, it is that same dreariness and languor, and spiritual paralysis, which, as I read appearances, have come upon our devotion. Burning earnestness, fiery zeal, unbounded heart-begotten love, unbounded heart-begotten fear, these are the very essence of

what Christianity wants to engender. I can find no other intelligible meaning in that command: "Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with thy whole heart and thy whole soul, and with all thy mind and with all thy strength;" no other meaning in that other command to take up the cross and follow Jesus; no other meaning in those terrible utterances of woe against him who was neither hot nor cold.

And then, going backward, I find the same thing true of God's religion, even in its imperfect form, among the Jews. For who in that old time, think you, was the man after God's own heart? Not Abel the just, nor Abraham the faithful, nor Moses the obedient, nor Job the patient, nor Solomon the wise. No, none of these, but David the rebellious, David the vain, David the adulterer, David the murderer! And why? Why, because, among all the great saints of the old law, he was the saint who was most terribly in earnest. One of his burning tears was worth a million of our icy prayers. His sin was strong, no doubt, but his strong passion went far to excuse it: and, even if it were not so excused, still the intensity of his sin was as weakness to the intensity of his sorrow. He feared God, and he loved God with a fiery vehemence of which we look in vain for traces in these present times. Neither love nor grief was a placid matter for him.

love meant a yearning-up for union

He knew that

with the Lord,

and he knew that to yearn for God by halves was a thing for devils to laugh at. He knew that for sin

a man must be, if he be worth anything, contrite, and he knew that to be really contrite a man must be, in some sense, broken-hearted. Whoever reads these Psalms of his, finds something like earnestness there.

From all this it follows evidently, that Christianity is not chargeable with that line of life and manner of devotion which fill all modern thinking men with such alarm; that both the one and the other are rejected and disowned and accursed of Christianity ; that all the impulses and teachings of Christianity are precisely in the opposite direction. And hence does it furthermore follow that, when, in developing my subject, I go on to investigate the cause or causes leading up to our present sickly state, that is, when I set myself to inquire how very many Catholics, believing all they believe, still manage to live such lukewarm lives-the answer is not far to seek. And the answer is, that, though they believe (and we hear a great deal about the faith of Irish Catholics especially), yet they never realize, never bring home with anything like a living earnestness the meaning of what they profess. Verbal faith, with professing Catholics, is common enough; real faith is much more rare among them. They give their assent to everything that the Church requires their assent to. But they give it in rather a peculiar way-somewhat in the way in which young men give their assent to the counsels of elderly people. Our Catholics recognize the doctrines of the Church as true, and as

very worthy of being followed. But they hardly ever gather up these doctrines into the living core of their hearts; hardly ever brood over them as very solemn words of God; hardly ever question them with eager eyes as words to be attended to at all hazards if they wish to ensure the safety of their souls. It is true now, as it was true of another time, "with desolation is the whole land laid desolate because there is no man who ponders in his heart.'

For, my Brethren, such is the nature of our Christian faith, that if a man once got himself heartily persuaded of its truth, it would not be within the range of things that he could be cold, or tepid, or languid, or listless any more. Let me try to test that assertion in a simple way. What, now, are the broad underlying doctrines of your creed? These : that each one of you, since Adam's fall, is naturally a foe of God, and a vessel devoted to His wrath; that of yourselves you could never have turned aside God's vengeance, nor kept yourselves from the jaws of hell; that, despite His anger and His fierce hatred of your sin, God yet gave for your salvation what was dearest to His bosom; that His Son-Himself, the Lord of all-came in human flesh to be your brother and your propitiation; that by a word this Man-God could have settled your redemption; that, nevertheless, He did not, and, because of His great love, could not redeem you in that formal, untouching way, but must perforce be ever straitened for His Baptism of Blood; that, in His long martyr

dom, He endured such agonies as (to put it in a word) would almost make Him seem to have taken not only your sin but your hell also upon His shoulders! Now, set aside mere words and expressions of belief, empty your minds of all barren formulas, and, for one moment, look straight in the face of these staring facts. Could ye be else than afire for Christ, if ye had ever realized this that Christ has done? Could ye be ungrateful for such crushing love if ye had ever given it even partial recognition? I say it cannot be; I say the heart of man gives it the lie direct. There are hard hearts and thankless in the world, I know-God help us, there is nothing bad that we have not in abundance-but there is no heart so stony as not to feel burning gratitude for plain unselfish favours crowned by plain unselfish love. If a man pay your debts and take you from the jailer's hands you know how you are to feel; if he bear burning shame to cloak your dishonour you know how you are to feel; if he walk on to death to save your miserable life you know how you are to feel; and if the great God die for you, have all His flesh laid open and all His bones laid bare for you, have His brain and side pierced for you, have His hands and feet nailed to a cross for you, as you hammer one block of wood to another is it then, and then alone, that you are to be untouched and unmoven? Brethren, I know what your hearts answer. But yet, the fact is, that you are untouched and unmoven. Christ waits on

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