The ideal of Christianity is not the abolition of inequality (only a certain sort of social theorists are insane enough to expect that). All men are born unequal in a variety of ways, physical, intellectual, moral; and under any form of society that so far has been invented they are born in social classes which remain very hard realities in spite of our theories. What Christianity aims at accomplishing is to transcend these inequalities, natural and artificial, by raising men to a state of spiritual equality, a state which ensures true and full enjoyment of all the privileges of the child of God. In this state there is open to all the gift of sanctifying grace which is the possession of God now, and in the future will unfold into the capacity of the complete participation of the life of heaven. This belongs to, is within the grasp of, any child, any ignorant peasant, any toiler, as much as it is within the grasp of bishop or priest or Religious. And this much—and how much it is!—the Church has succeeded in accomplishing. It may be slow in offering the riches of the Gospel to the unconverted world, but where it has presented the Gospel, it presents it to all men as a Gospel of salvation and sanctification. When tempted to discouragement let us remember that whatever the shortcoming of the Church, it is yet true that every man, woman and child in these United States of America can through its instrumentality, become a saint whenever he desires. But, naturally, to become a saint, effort is necessary.

Where the Church has failed is not in the offer of salvation and sanctity, but in removing some of of the obvious obstacles to its attainment by many to whom it appeals, to whom its divine mission is. It has not succeeded in convincing us that we are members one of another, that is, it has not succeeded in persuading us to act upon what we profess in any broad way. The Church is not a fellowship in any comprehensive sense. The divisions which run through secular society and divide group from group run through it also. The parish which should be the exemplification of the Christian brotherhood in action is not so. Too often a parish is known as the parish of a certain social group. There are parishes to which people go to get "into society." Very likely they do not succeed, but that is the sort of impression that the parish membership has made upon them. Then there are parishes to which people "in society" would not be transferred. There are churches in which no poor person would set foot, not that they would be unwelcome, but that they would feel out of place. So long as such things are true, our practice of brotherhood has not much to commend of it.

And when we go about setting things right I am not sure that we do not mostly make them worse. I do not believe that it is the business of the Church to set about the abolition of inequalities and the getting rid of the distinctions between man and man. Apart from the waste of time due to attempting the impossible, what would be gained? Pending the arrival of the social millenium we need to do something; and that something, it seems to me a mistake to assume must be social. "We must bring people together": but what is gained by bringing people together when they do not want to be together, and will not actually get together when you force them into proximity. There is nothing more expressive of the failure of well-meant activity than a church gathering where people at once group themselves along the familiar lines and decline to mix, notwithstanding the utmost endeavours of clergy and zealous ladies to bring them together. The thing is an object lesson of wrong method.

Is there a right method? There must be, though no one seems to have found it yet. There is in any case a right point of departure in our common membership in Jesus Christ. Suppose we drop the supposition that we make, I presume because we think it pious, that if they are both Christians a dock labourer ought to be quite at home at a millionaire's dinner party, or a scrub-woman in a box at the Metropolitan opera house. Suppose we drop the attempt to force people together on lines which will be impossible till after the social revolution has buried us all in a common grave, and fasten attention on the one fact that, from our present point of view, counts, the fact that we are Christians. Suppose one learns to meet all men and all women simply on the basis of their religion; when that forms the bond that unites us when we come together, we have at once common grounds of interest in the life and activities of the Body of Christ. Suppose the millionaire going down town in his motor sees his clerk walking and stops and picks him up, and instead of talking constrainedly about the weather or about business, he begins naturally to talk to him about spiritual matters. Why could they not talk about the Mission that has just been held, or the Quiet Day that is in prospect? One great trouble, is it not? is that we fight shy of talking to our fellow-Christians of the interests that we really have in common and try to put intercourse on some other ground where we have little or nothing in common. The things that should, and probably do, vitally interest us, we decline to talk about at all. We are so stiff and formal and restrained in all matter of personal religious experience that we are unable to express the fact of Christian Brotherhood. The fact that you smile at the presentment of the case, that you cannot even imagine yourself talking about your spiritual experience with your clerk or your employer, shows how far you are from a truly Christian conception of Brotherhood.

Our Lord's words that we are making our subject indicate the paramount importance that He laid upon the acceptance of God's will as the ultimate rule of life. "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother." "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." That is the common ground on which we are all invited to stand, the ground of a common loyalty to God, of intense zeal for the cause of God. Our Lord gave His whole life to that cause. As His disciples watched Him on an occasion, they remembered that it was written: "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." Zeal is not a very popular quality because it is always disturbing the equanimity and self-complacency of lukewarm people. And then, we dislike to be thought fanatics. But I fancy that there will always be a touch of the fanatic about any very zealous Christian, and it is not worth while to suppress our zeal for fear of the world's judgment upon it. What we have to avoid is the misdirection of zeal. There is, no doubt, a zeal which is "not according to knowledge." We need to be sure, in other words, that our zeal is a zeal for God, and not a zeal for party or person or cause. It is no doubt quite easy to imagine that we are seeking to do God's will when we are merely seeking to impose on our own will. Self-seeking is quite destructive of the friendship and service of God. The Kingdom whose interests we are attempting to forward may turn out to be a Kingdom in which we expect to sit on the right hand or the left of the throne because of the brilliance of the service rendered.

Life is simplified very much when the will of God thus becomes its guiding principle, and all other relations of life are subordinated to our relation to our heavenly Father. Then have we brought life to that complete simplicity which is near akin to peace. When we have learned in deciding any line of action not to think what our neighbours and friends will feel, or what the world will think, but only what God will think, we have little difficulty in making up our minds. Suppose that a boy has to make up his mind whether he will study for the priesthood, the vital thing on which to concentrate his thought and prayer is whether God is calling him to that life, and if he is convinced that he is being called the whole question should be settled. In fact in most cases it is far from being settled because this simplicity has not been attained. There is a whole social circle to be dealt with, who urge the hardness of the life, the scant reward, the greater advantages of a business career, and so on; all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the question to be decided. It is so all through life. In most questions of life's decisions, no doubt, there is no sense of any vocation at all, of a determining will of God; but is not that because we assume that God has no will in such matters, and leaves us free to follow our own devices? Such an assumption is hardly justified in the case of One to Whom the fall of a sparrow is a matter of interest. It is our weakness, or the sign of our spiritual incompetence, that we have unconsciously removed the greater part of life from the jurisdiction of the divine will. We do not habitually think of God as interested in the facts of daily experience; we do not take Him with us into offices and factories. Perhaps we think that they are hardly fit places for God, and I have no doubt that He has many things to suffer there. But He is there, and will suffer, until we recognise His right there, and insist upon His there being supreme.

Let us go back for a moment to Our Lady standing outside the place where Jesus was preaching, perplexed and worried at the course He was taking. I suppose that it is always easier to surrender ourselves unreservedly into God's hands than it is to so surrender some one we love. I suppose that S. Mary so trusted in God that she never thought with anxiety of what His providence was preparing for her; but she would not quite take that attitude about her Son; or rather, while she did intellectually, no doubt, take that attitude, her feelings never went the whole distance that her mind went. But surrender to the will of God means complete surrender of ourself and ours. It means absolute confidence in God, it means lying quiet in his arms, as the child lies still in the arms of his mother. It means that we trust God.

Rose-Mary, Sum of virtue virginal, Fresh Flower on whom the dew of heaven downfell; O Gem, conjoined in joy angelical, In whom rejoiced the Saviour was to dwell: Of refuge Ark, of mercy Spring and Well, Of Ladies first, as is of letters A, Empress of heaven, of paradise and hell— Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.

O Star, that blindest Phoebus' beams so bright, With course above the empyrean crystalline; Above the sphere of Saturn's highest height, Surmounting all the angelic orders nine; O Lamp, that shin'st before the throne divine, Where sounds hosanna in cherubic lay, With drum and organ, harp and cymbeline— Mother, of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,

O Cloister chaste of pure virginity, That Christ hath closed 'gainst crime for evermo'; Triumphant Temple of the Trinity, That didst the eternal Tartarus o'erthrow; Princess of peace, imperial Palm, I trow, From thee our Samson sprang invict in fray; Who, with one buffet, Belial hath laid low— Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,

Thy blessed sides the mighty Champion bore, Who hath, with many a bleeding wound in fight, Victoriously o'erthrown the dragon hoar That ready was his flock to slay and smite; Nor all the gates of hell him succour might, Since he that robber's rampart brake away, While all the demons trembled at the sight— Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,

O Maiden meek, chief Mediatrix for man, And Mother mild, full of humility, Pray to thy Son, with wounds that sanguine ran, Whereby for all our trespass slain was he. And since he bled his blood upon a tree, 'Gainst Lucifer, our foe, to be our stay, That we in heaven may sing upon our knee— Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,

Hail, Pearl made pure; hail, Port of paradise; Hail, Ruby, redolent of rays to us; Hail, Crystal clear, Empress and Queen, hail thrice; Mother of God, hail, Maid exalted thus; O Gratia plena, tecum Dominus; With Gabriel that we may sing and say, Benedicta tu in mulieribus— Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.

William Dunbar,

XV-XVI. Cents.



PART TWO

CHAPTER XVI

HOLY WEEK I

Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.

S. Matt. XXVI, 56.

Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God, accept, O Lord, our prayers and save us.

May the Holy Mother of God and all the saints be our intercessors with the Heavenly Father, that He may deign to be merciful to us, and in pity save His creatures. Lord God all-powerful! save us and have mercy upon us.

Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God, the Immaculate Mother of Thine only Son, and through the prayers of all the saints, receive, O Lord, our supplications; hear us, O Lord, and have mercy upon us; pardon us, bear with us, and blot out our sins, and make us worthy to glorify Thee, together with Thy Son and the Holy Ghost, now and ever, world without end. Amen.

Armenian.

We try to see our Lord's passion through the eyes of His Blessed Mother. We feel that all through Holy Week she must have been in direct touch with the experiences of our Lord. Her outlook would have been that of the Apostolic circle the record of which we get in the Gospels. Our Lord's ministry had showed a period of popularity during which it must have seemed to those closest to Him that they were moving rapidly to success; and then, after the day at Caeserea Phillipi, when His Messianic claims had been acknowledged, they would have been filled with enthusiasm for the mission the meaning of which was now defined. Then came a period of disappointment. Our Lord declined to become a popular leader, and by the nature of His preaching, the demands that He made upon those who were inclined to support Him lost popularity till it was a question to be considered whether the very Apostles would not desert Him. Then came the flash of renewed enthusiasm which is evidenced by the Palm Sunday entry, bringing, no doubt, renewed hopes to those nearest our Lord who seem to have been utterly unable to accept the view of His failure and death that He kept before them. But the hope vanished as quickly as it was roused. In less than a week the rejoicing group of Sunday followed Him from the Upper Chamber to the shades of Gethsemane. The betrayal, the trial, the end, come quickly on.

This to S. Mary was the piercing of the sword through the very heart. These were the days when the meaning of close association with Incarnate God, with God Who was pursuing a mission of rescue, came out. The mission of the Son for the Redemption of man meant submitting to the extremity of insult and torture, and it meant that those who were closest associated with Him should be caught into the circle of His pain. As our Lord was displaying the best of which humanity is capable, so was He calling out the worst of which it is capable. These last days of the life of Jesus show where man can be led when he surrenders himself to the dominion of the Power of Evil and becomes the servant of sin. The triumph of demoniac malice through its instruments, the Roman governor, the Jewish authorities, of necessity swept over all who were related to our Lord. The storm scattered the Apostolic group and left the Christ to face His trial alone. Yet not alone: He himself tells us the truth. "Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." It was what the Prophet had foreseen: "All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered."

We do not know where S. Mary was during these days, but we are sure that she was as near our Lord as it was possible for her to be. We know that her own thought would be of the possibility of ministering to Him. We know that she would not have fled with the Apostles in their momentary panic. She was at the Cross, and she was at the grave, and she would have been as near Him in the agony and the trial as it was possible for her to be. And she too was in agony. Every pang of our Lord found echo in her. Every blow that fell upon His bleeding back, she too felt. Every insult that the soldiers inflicted, hurt her. Our Lord in the consciousness of His mission is constantly sustained by the thought that His Passion and Death is an offering to the will of the Father,—an offering even for these miserable men who are brutally treating a man whom they know to be innocent. Her sorrow is the utter desolation of seeing the One Whom she loves above all else suffer, while she can bear Him no alleviation in His suffering, cannot so much as wipe the blood from off His wounded brow, cannot even touch His hand, and look her love into His eyes. She follows from place to place while our Lord is being hustled from Caiaphas to Pilate and from Pilate to Herod and back again; from time to time hearing from some one who has succeeded in getting nearer, how the trial is going on, what the accusation is, how Jesus is bearing Himself, what answers He has made, what the authorities have said. Once and again, it may be, catching a distant glimpse of Him as He is led about by the guards, seeing Him always more worn and weary, always nearer the point of collapse. Herself, too, nearer collapse; yet going on still with that strength that love gives to mothers, determined at the cost of any suffering to be near Him, as near as she can be, till the very end. So we see her on that day in the streets of Jerusalem, and think of the distance travelled since the morning when Gabriel said to her, wondering: "Hail thou that art highly favoured.... Blessed art thou among women."

We, too, follow. We have so often followed, with the Gospel in our hands, and wondered at the method of God. We have tried hour after hour to penetrate the meaning of the Passion, to find what personal message it brings, to discover what light it throws on our own lives. We have gone out into Gethsemane and placed ourselves with the three chosen Apostles while our Lord went on to pray by Himself; and we have discovered in ourselves the same weariness, the same tendency to sleep, in the presence of what we tell ourselves is the most important of all interests. We call up the scene under the olives, and find that we wander and are inattentive and idle when we most want to be attentive and alert. We place ourselves in the group that surrounds our Lord when the soldiers, led by Judas, come, and ask ourselves shall I too run away? And our memory flashes the answer: You have run away again and again: you have in the face, not of grave dangers, but of insignificant trifles—how insignificant they look now—for fear of criticism, for fear of being thought odd, for fear of the opinion of worldly companions, for fear of being pitied or laughed at, over and over again you have run away. The things that seemed important when they were present seem pitifully insignificant in the retrospect.

We follow out of the garden to the meeting-place of the Sanhedrin, to the Judgment seat of Pilate, to the palace of Herod. Any impulse to criticise S. Peter is speedily suppressed: we have denied so often under such trifling provocation. S. Peter was frightened from participation in the act of our Lord's sacrifice through mortal fear of his life. We have stayed away from the offering of the Holy Sacrifice, how often! from mere sloth, from disinclination to effort, from the fact that our participation would prevent us from joining in some act of worldly amusement. S. Peter, following to the high Priest's palace to see the end, looks heroic beside our frivolity. We follow through the details of the trial, we go to Herod's palace and see the brutal treatment of our Lord, and we remember of these men that their conduct was founded in ignorance. We do not for a moment believe that they would have spit upon our Lord and buffeted Him, and crowned Him with a crown of thorns, if they had believed that He was God. But we believe that He is God. Our desertion of Him when we sin, our contempt of His expressed ideals when we compromise with the world, our departure from His example when we excuse ourselves on the ground of very minor inconveniences from keeping some holy day or fasting day, are not founded in ignorance at all. They can hardly be said to be founded in weakness, so slight is the temptation that we do not resist. As we meditate on the Passion, as we keep Good Friday, very pitiful all our idleness and subterfuges appear to us. But we so easily shake off the effect! We emerge from our meditation almost convinced that the stinging sense of the truth of our conduct which we are experiencing is the equivalent of having reformed it. We go out with a glow of virtue and by night realise that we have sinned again!

It is no doubt well that we should not be permanently depressed about our spiritual state, but only because we have taken all the pains we can to heal the wounds of sin. There is no need that any one should abide in a state of sin because there has been in the Precious Blood a fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, and by washing therein, though our souls were as scarlet, they shall become white as snow. We have the right to a certain optimism about ourselves if it be founded on actual spiritual activity which ceaselessly tries to reproduce the Christ-experience in us, even the experience of the Passion by the voluntary self-discipline to which we subject ourselves. A brilliant writer has spoken of those whose view of their lives is drawn from "that fountain of all optimism—sloth." That is a true saying: our optimism is often no more than an idle refusal to face facts; a quaint and good-natured assumption that nothing very much matters and that everything will be all right in the end!

This easy going optimism is commonly as far as possible from representing any spiritual fact. If we are seeking any serious and fruitful relation to the Passion of our Lord, we must seek it along the Way of the Cross. To follow His example means to follow His experience, to treat life as He treated it. The content of our lives is quite different, but the treatment of the given fact must be essentially the same. We need the same repulse of temptation, the same quiet disregard of the appeals of the world, whether it offer the alleviation of difficulty or the bestowal of pleasure as the reward of our allegiance. And we, sinners in so manifold ways, need what our Lord did not need, repulsion from our sins as the necessary preliminary to forgiveness.

My experience makes me feel very strongly that we are apt to be deficient in the first step in repentance—contrition. As we follow the Way of Sorrows we know that our Lord is suffering for us; and we feel that the starting point of our repentance must lie in our success in making that a personal matter. In our self examination, in our approach to the sacrament of penance, we are compelled to ask ourselves, Am I in fact sorry for my sins? It surely is not enough that we fear the results of sin, or that we are ashamed at our failure. This really is not repentance but a sort of pride. There must, I feel, be sorrow after a godly sort. That is, true contrition, true sorrow for sin, is the sort of sorrow which is born of the Vision of God; it has its origin in love. I have found in our Lord love giving itself to me, and I must find in myself love giving itself to Him. To my forgiveness it is not enough that God loves me. I know that He loves me and will love me to the end, whether I repent or not; but the possibility of forgiveness lies in my love of Him, whether it takes such hold on me as actually to stimulate me to forsake sin. I shall never really forsake sin through shame or fear; one gets used to those emotions after a little and disregards them. But one does not get used to love; it grows to be an increasing force in life, and so masters us as to draw us away from sin.

Contrition then will be the offspring of love. It will be born when we follow Christ Jesus out on the Sorrowful Way and understand that He is going out for us. Then we want to get as near Him as possible: we want to take His Hand and go by His side. We want to stand by Him in His trial and share His condemnation. We want constantly to tell Him how sorry we are that we have brought Him here. We shall not be content that He feel all the pain. We are convinced that we ought to share in the pain as we share in the results of the Passion. When we have achieved this point of view we shall feel that our approach to Him to ask His forgiveness needs, it may be, much more care than we have hitherto bestowed upon it. We have thought of penance as forgiveness; now we begin to see how much the attitude which precedes our entrance to the confessional counts, and that we must value the gift of God enough to have made sure that we are ready to receive it. We kneel down, therefore, and look at our crucifix, and say: "This hast Thou done for me," and make our act of love in which we join ourselves to the Cross of Jesus. We tell ourselves that love is the beginning and end of our relation to Him.

It is to be urged that every Christian should be utterly familiar with the life of our Lord, and should spend time regularly in meditation upon His life, and especially upon His Passion. Love is the constant counteractive of familiarity; and it is kept fresh in our souls by the contemplation of what our Lord has actually done for us. A general recalling of what He has done has not the same stimulating force as the vivid placing before us of the actual details of His work. To most of us visible aids to the realisation of our Lord's action for us are most helpful. A crucifix on the wall of one's room before which one can say one's prayers, and before which also we stop for a moment time and again in the course of the day, just to say a few words, to make an act of love, of contrition, or of union, keeps the thought of the Passion fresh. We gain in freshness and variety of prayer by the use of such devotions as the litany of the Passion or the Way of the Cross. A set of cards of the Stations help us to say them in our homes. It is much to be desired that we accustom ourselves to devotional helps of all sorts. We are quite too much inclined to think that there is something of spiritual superiority in the attempt to conduct our devotional life without any of the helps which centuries of Christian experience have provided. It is the same sort of feeling that makes other Christians assume that there is a superiority in spiritual attainment evidenced by their dispensing with "forms," especially with printed prayers. It is just as well to remember that we did not originate the Christian Religion, but inherited it; and that the practices of devotion that have been found helpful by generations of saints, and after full trial have retained the approval of the greater part of Christendom, can hardly be treated as valueless, much less as superstitious. The fact that saints have found them valuable and one has not, may possibly not be a criticism of the saints.

The meditation upon the Way of the Cross, the vision of Jesus scourged, spitted upon, crowned with thorns, may well give us some searchings of heart in regard to our own easy-going, luxurious life. Nothing seems to disturb the modern person so much as the suggestion that the chief business of the Christian Religion is not to look after their comfort. They hold, it would appear, to the pre-Christian notion that prosperity is an obvious mark of God's favour, and that by the accumulation of wealth they are giving indisputable evidence of piety. It is well to recall that there is no such dangerous path as that of continual success. I do not in the least mean to imply that success is sinful or indicates the existence of sin, but I do mean to insist very strongly that the successful man needs to be a very spiritually watchful man. He is quite apt to think that he may take all sorts of liberties with the laws of God. There are, no doubt, evident dangers to the unsuccessful man, but the Holy Scriptures have not thought it worth while to spend much time in denouncing him. It has a good deal to say of the danger, not so much of wealth, as of prosperity in general: "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and prosperous ease were in her." When we find ourselves in a satisfied and comfortable home life, so comfortable that we find it difficult to get up to a week-day Mass, and disinclined to go out to a service after dinner, we need watching.

And the best watchman is oneself; and the best method of self-examination is by the Cross. Is there any sense in which we can be said to be following our Lord on the Sorrowful Way? Have we taken up the Cross to go after Him, or are we assuming that we can just as well drift along with the crowd of those who only look on? We all need from time to time to consider the Catholic teaching as to mortification and self-discipline. I am quite aware that to insist on this is not the way of popularity, but nevertheless I learned a long time ago that about the only way that a priest can take if he wishes to be saved is the way of unpopularity. And therefore I am going to insist that the practice of rigorous self-discipline is essential to any healthy Christian life. We cannot dispense ourselves from this, for the mere fact that we are dispensing ourselves is the proof that we need that upon which we are turning our back. Briefly, what I mean is that the assumption of the Cross by a Christian means that he is taking into his life, voluntarily, personal acts of self-sacrifice which he offers to our Lord as the evidence and the means of his own Cross-bearing.

The unruliness of our nature can only be kept in order by continual acts of self-discipline. We, no doubt, recognise the need of the discipline of the passions, but our theory, so far as we can be said to have one, would seem to be that the discipline of the passions means resistence to special temptations as they arise. We may no doubt sin through the passions, and therefore we need a minimum of watchfulness to meet temptations which come our way. I submit that such a way of conducting life is quite sufficient to account for the vast amount of failure we witness or, perhaps, experience. When from time to time the country gets alarmed about its health, when it is threatened with some epidemic such as influenza, the papers are full of medical advice the sum of which is you cannot dodge all the disease germs that are in the air, but you can by a vigorous course of exercise and by careful diet, keep yourself in a state of such physical soundness that the chances are altogether favourable for your withstanding the assaults of disease. No doubt the vast majority of people prefer not to follow this advice. A considerable number of them resort to various magic cults, such as letting sudden drafts of cold air in upon the inoffensive bystander with a view to exorcising the germs. But it remains that the medical advice is sound: it amounts to saying, "Keep yourself in the best physical condition possible and you will run the minimum chance of being ill."

The Catholic treatment of life and its recommendation of discipline and mortification has precisely the same basis as the physical advice—an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. We are exposed to temptation constantly, and we need to recognise the fact and prepare ourselves to meet it; and the best preparation is the preparation of self-discipline for the purpose of keeping rebellious nature under control. Good farming does not consist in pulling up weeds; it consists in the choice and preparation of the ground in which the seed is to be sown; it looks primarily to the growth of the seed and not to the elimination of the weeds. Our nature is a field in which the Word of God is sown; its preparation and care is what we need to focus attention on, not the weeds.

Self-discipline is the preparation of nature, the discipline of the powers of the spiritual life with a view to what they have to do. And one of the important phases of our preparation is to teach our passions obedience, to subject them to the control of the enlightened will. If they are accustomed to obey they are not very likely to get out of hand in some time of crisis. If they are broken in to the dominion of spiritual motive, they will instinctively seek that motive whenever they are incited to act. Hence the immense spiritual value of the habitual denial to ourselves of indulgence in various innocent kinds of activity. I do not at all mean that we are never to have innocent indulgences: I do mean that the declining of them occasionally for the purpose of self-discipline is a most wholesome practice. How frequently it is desirable must be determined by the individual circumstances. It is utterly disastrous to permit a child to have everything it wants because there is sufficient money to spend, to permit it to run to soda fountains or go to the picture houses as it desires. Any sane person recognises that; but does the same person recognise the sane principle as applying in his own life? Does he feel the value of going without something for a day or two, or staying from places of amusement for a time, or of abandoning for a while this or that luxury?

The principle is of course the ascetic principle of self-mastery. It is best brought before us by the familiar practice of fasting, which is very mildly recommended to us in its lowest terms in the table in the Book of Common Prayer. Naturally, its value is not the value of going without this or that, but the value of self-mastery. The very fact that our appetites rebel at the notion shows their undisciplined character. The child at the table begins to ask, not for a sensible meal founded on sound reasons of hygiene, but for various things that are an immediate temptation to the appetite. The adult is not markedly different save that he preserves a certain order in indulgence. The principle of fasting is that he should from time to cut across the inclination of appetite, and either go without a meal altogether, or select such food as will maintain health without delighting appetite. So man gains the mastery over the animal side of his nature and shows himself the child of God.

The actual practice of the ascetic life really carries us much farther than these surface matters of a physical nature that have been cited. It applies in particular to the disposition of time and the ruling of daily actions. The introduction of a definite order into the day actually seems to increase the time at one's disposal. I know, I can hear you saying: "If you were the head of a family, and had children to look after, you would not talk that way. You would know something of the practical difficulties of life." But indeed I am quite familiar with the situation. And if I were so situated I am certain that I should feel all the more need of order. Families are disorderly because we let them be; because we do not face the initial trouble of making them orderly. A school or a factory would be still more disorderly than a family if it were permitted to be. Any piece of human mechanism will get out of order if you will let it. That is precisely the reason for the insistence on the ascetic principle—this tendency of life to get out of order; that is the meaning of all that I have been saying, of the whole Catholic insistence on discipline. Time can be controlled; and, notwithstanding American experience, children can be controlled; and control means the rescuing of the life from disorder and sin, and the lifting it to a level of order and sanity and possible sanctity.

We cannot hope to meet successfully the common temptations of life except we be prepared to meet them, except there be in our life an element of foresight. An undisciplined and untried strength is an unknown quantity. The man who expects to meet temptation when it occurs without any preparation is in fact preparing for failure. I do not believe that there is any other so great a source of spiritual weakness and disaster as the going out to meet life without preceding discipline, thus subjecting the powers of our nature to trials for which we have not fitted them. Self-control, self-discipline, ascetic practice, are indispensible to a successful Christian life.

O STAR of starres, with thy streames clear, Star of the Sea, to shipman Light or Guide, O lusty Living, most pleasant t'appear, Whose brighte beames the cloudes may not hide: O Way of Life to them that go or ride, Haven from tempest, surest up t'arrive, O me have mercy for thy Joyes five.

* * * * *

O goodly Gladded, when that Gabriel With joy thee gret that may not be numb'red, Or half the bliss who coulde write or tell, When th' Holy Ghost to thee was obumbred, Wherethrough the fiendes were utterly encombred? O wemless Maid, embellished in his birth, That man and angel thereof hadden mirth.

John Lydgate of Bury, XV Cent. From Chaucerian and Other Poems, edited by W. W. Skeat, 1894.



PART TWO

CHAPTER XVII

HOLY WEEK II

And after they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.

S. Matt. XXVII, 31.

Forgive, O Lord, we beseech thee, the sins of thy people: that we, who are not able to do anything of ourselves, that can be pleasing to thee, may be assisted in the way of salvation by the prayers of the Mother of thy Son. Who.

Having partaken of thy heavenly table, we humbly beseech thy clemency, O Lord, our God, that we who honour the Assumption of the Mother of God, may, by her intercession, be delivered from all evils. Through.

OLD CATHOLIC.

The way of the Cross is indeed a Sorrowful Way. We have meditated upon it so often that we are familiar with all the details of our Lord's action as He follows it from the Judgment Seat of Pilate to the Place of a Skull. I wonder if we enough pause to look with our Lord at the crowds that line the way, or at those who follow Him out of the city. It is not a mere matter of curiosity that we should do so, or an exercise of the devout imagination; the reason why we should examine carefully the faces of those men who attend our Lord on the way to His death is that somewhere in that crowd we shall see our own faces: it is a mirror of sinful humanity that we look into there. All the seven deadly sins are there incarnate.

It is extremely important that we should get this sort of personal reaction from the Passion because we are so prone to be satisfied with generalities, to confess that we are miserable sinners, and let it go at that! But to stop there is to stop short of any possibility of improvement, because we can only hope to improve when we understand our lives in detail, when we face them as concrete examples of certain sins.

There was pride there. It was expressed by both Roman and Jewish officialism which looked with scorn on this obscure fanatic who claimed to be a king! Pilate had satisfied himself of His harmlessness by a very cursory examination. This Galilean Prophet with His handful of followers, peasants and women, who had deserted Him at the first sign of danger, was hardly worth troubling about. The only ground for any action at all was the fear that the Jewish leaders might be disagreeable. Those Jewish leaders took a rather more serious view of the situation because they knew that through the purity of His teaching and His obvious power to perform miracles, a power but just now once more strikingly demonstrated in the raising of Lazarus, He had a powerful hold on the people. They, these Jewish leaders, declined a serious examination of the claims of such a man in their pride of place and knowledge of the Scriptures. They were concerned to sweep Him aside as a possible leader in a popular outbreak, not as one whose claim to the Messiahship needed a moment's examination.

This intellectual pride is one of the very greatest sins to which humanity is tempted. It goes very deep in its destructive force because it is a sin, preeminently, of the spiritual nature, of that in us which is akin to God, His very image. It is, you will remember, the sin on which our Lord centres His chief denunciation. And common as it has always been, it has never been so common as it is to-day. Pilate and the chief priests are duplicated in every community in the thousands who reject Christianity without any adequate examination as incredible in view of what they actually hold, or as inconvenient in view of what they desire to practice. We have only to read very superficially in the current literature of the day, we have only to examine the teaching in colleges, to be completely convinced of the vast extent of the revolt against the Christian Religion. This revolt is for the most part a revolt without adequate examination. It assumes that the Christian Religion is contrary to science, or to something else that is established as true. It looks at Christianity superficially through the eyes of those who reject it and are ignorant of it. The fact is that Christianity cannot be understood in any complete sense of the word by those who do not practice it. Its "evidence" is no doubt of great force; of sufficient force to lead men to experiment; but the actual comprehension of Christ as the Saviour of man is an experience. The operation of the Holy Spirit in life is necessarily proved, and only completely proved, by the action of the Spirit Himself.

Another demonstration of the same pride is seen in the refusal, without adequate examination, to accept the Catholic Religion, and the picking and choosing among articles of belief and sacraments and practices as to what we will use or observe. Men do not like this or that, and they therefore decline it. The whole attitude is one of self-will and pride. Whatsoever comes to us with a great weight of Christian experience back of it certainly deserves careful consideration; it demands of us that we treat it as other than a matter of taste. Pride is the commonest of sins and the most dangerous for it attacks the very heart of the spiritual life. It runs, to be sure, through a broad range of experience and not all manifestations of pride are mortal sin; but all manifestations of it are subtle and insidious and capable of expansion to an indefinite degree. For there is no difference in nature between the spiritual attitude of the person who says, "I do not see any sense in that and will not do it," when the matter in question may be the Church's rule of fasting, and that of the man who before Pilate's Judgment Seat cried out, "We have no king but Caesar."

It was in fact because they found their own power and place threatened that the Jewish authorities were so determined on our Lord's death. Their sin from this point of view was the sin of covetousness. This sin reaches its highest point when it is greed for power over other men's lives and destinies, when it is ready to sacrifice the lives of others in order to gain or maintain its ends. In this broad sense it is the most socially destructive of sins. The wars of the world for these many years have been wars for commercial supremacy. The world is being continually exploited by commercial enterprises which will stop at nothing to gain their ends. Some day a history of the last two hundred years will be written which will tell the story of the commercial expansion of the world we call civilised, and it will be the most horrible book that has ever been written. It will contain the story of the Spanish colonisation of America. It will contain the history of the slave trade. It will contain the history of the Belgian Congo, and of the rubber industry in South America. It will contain the history of the American Indian and of the opium trade of India—and of many like things.

But while we shudder at the world-torturing ways of the pursuit of wealth, of the world-wide seeking of money and power, we need not forget that the sin of covetousness is as common as any sin can be. It is so common and so subtle that it is almost impossible to know how far one is a victim of it. It is deliberately taught to us as children under the guise of thrift, which if it be a virtue is certainly one that the saints have overlooked. We are constantly called on to strike a balance between what are the proper needs of life and what is an improper concentration of attention upon ourselves. Waste of money, like waste of any other energy, is a sin; but it is a very nice question as to what is waste. I think it a pretty safe rule to give expenditure the benefit of the doubt when it is for others, and to deny it when it is for self.

However, I imagine that those who are conscientiously trying to conduct their lives as the children of God will have little difficulty in this matter. The real trouble is not in the matter of expenditure but in the matter of gain. The ethics of business are very far from being the ethics of the Gospel, and we are often frankly told by those engaged in business that it cannot be successfully conducted on the basis of the ethics of the Gospel, That it is not so conducted is sufficiently obvious from a cursory scanning of the advertising columns of any newspaper or magazine. The ideal of the business world is success. Naturally, one cannot carry on an unsuccessful business, but need it be success by all means and to all extents? Are there no limits to the methods by which business is to be pushed, except legal limits? If there is no room for Christian ethics in the business world there can be but one end; competitive business will lead the civilisation that it controls to inevitable disaster. Our Lord said: "Take heed and beware of covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth." And He went on to speak a parable which has come to be known as the Parable of the Rich Fool. The "practical man" may be as angered as he likes by this teaching, but in his soul he knows that our Lord was right. When such things are pointed out from the pulpit the "practical man" says: "What would become of the Church were it not for the rich and the successful?" I think that the answer is that in that case the Church would no more represent the rich and would have a fair chance of once more representing Jesus Christ.

It may seem at the first sight that of the mortal sins lust was not represented here upon the Sorrowful Way; but that, I think is but a superficial analysis of the nature of lust, thinking only of some manifestations of it. There is however one sin that has its roots deep in lust which psychologists tell us is one of its commonest manifestations, and that is cruelty. Lust is not always, but commonly, cruel; and the desire to inflict pain on others is a very common form of its expression. There are sights we have seen or incidents we have read of, it may be a boy torturing an animal or another child, it may be a shouting mass of men about a prize-ring, it may be soldiers sacking a town,—when the action seems so senseless that we are at a loss to account for it; but the account of it lies in the mystery of our sensual nature, in the ultimate animal that we are. The savage joy that is being expressed by the participants in such scenes is ultimately a sensual joy. These men who delighted in the torture of our Lord were sensualists; and there are few of us who if we will watch our selves closely will not find traces of the animal showing itself from time to time. Of this crowd about the Cross relatively few could have known anything about the case of our Lord; but they were fascinated by the spectacle of a man's torture. If the executions of criminals were public to-day there would undoubtedly be huge crowds to gaze upon them.

It is one of the lessons we learn from the study of sin that what we had thought was the essence of the sin was in fact but one of the manifestations of it, and that we have to carry our study far before we arrive at the ideal, Know thyself. It is always dangerous to assume that we know when we have not been at the pains to look at a subject on all sides. Our sensual nature needs a very careful discipline, and the mere freedom from certain forms of the sin of lust is not the equivalent of that purity which is the medium of the Vision of God.

It is the sin of gluttony which is the least obvious in the Way of the Cross. There are no doubt plenty of gluttons there, but that is not what we are trying to find; we are trying to see how each sin contributed to this final act in the drama of our Lord's life, how each sin contributed to put men in opposition to our Lord. It is not the actual sin of gluttony that we shall find in operation here but certain inevitable effects of it, What is the effect of gluttony on the soul of man? Absorption in the pursuit of the pleasures that spring from material things; the indulgence of the appetite, and the natural result of such indulgence which is to render the soul insensitive to the spiritual. The man whose motto is, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," puts himself out of touch with the spiritual realities of life. He is materialistic, whatever may be his philosophy. He wants immediate results from life. When he is confronted with our Lord, when he is told that our Lord makes demands upon life for self-restraint and self-discipline, that He demands that the appetites be curbed rather than indulged, he declines allegiance. One can have no doubt that in our Lord's time as to-day indifference to His teaching and failure even to take in what the Gospel means or how it can be a possible rule of life is largely due to the dull spiritual state, outcome of the indulgence of the appetite for meat and drink. Men whose brains are clogged by over eating, and whose faculties are in a deadened state through the use of alcohol, cannot well understand the Gospel of God.

There is abundant evidence of anger all along the Way of the Cross. The constant thwarting of the purpose of the Jewish authorities by our Lord, His unsparing criticism of them before the people, had stirred them to fury. If our Lord had seemed to them to threaten their "place and nation" we can understand that they would show toward Him intense hostility. Their attitude toward the people whose religious interests they were supposed to have in charge was one of utter contempt: "This people which knoweth not the Law is cursed." Our Lord's attitude was the opposite of all this. It was not, to be sure, as to-day it is represented to be an appeal to the people. He was not bidding for popular support, but he showed unbounded sympathy with the people; He cast His teaching in a form that would appeal to them and draw them to him. He made a popular appeal in that He showed Himself understanding of the popular mind and without social prejudice of any sort. This setting aside of the arrogant authorities of Israel roused them to implacable wrath. They felt that our Lord was setting Himself to undermine their authority, and as they felt that their authority was "of God" their indignation translated itself into terms of zeal for God.

This anger that manages to wear a cloak of virtue is peculiarly dangerous to the soul. When we are just ordinarily mad over some offence committed against us it is no doubt a sin; but it is not a sin of the same malignity as when we feel that we can go any lengths because we are not angry on our own behalf, then our anger almost becomes an act of religion in our eyes. We have become the defenders of a cause. No doubt there is such a thing as "righteous indignation," but it is not a virtue that we are compelled to practice, and we would do well to leave it alone as much as possible lest our indignation exceed our righteousness, and we indentify our personal interests with the cause of God.

The worst feature of tempermental flare-ups is the testimony they bear to our lack of discipline. When we excuse ourselves or others on the ground that action is "temperamental" we are in fact no more than restating the fact that there is sore need of discipline; and there is no more ground for excusing one variety of temperament for its lack of discipline than an other. In fact, the more inclined a temperament is to certain sins, the more necessity there is for the appropriate sort of training. People without self-control, who are constantly losing their temper, are public nuisances and ought to be suppressed. There is the worst kind of arrogance in the assumption that I do not have to control myself and can speak and act as I like. No one, whatever his position, has the right to ignore the feelings of others; and the more the position is one of authority, exempting him from a certain kind of criticism, the more is he bound to criticise himself and examine himself as to this particular sin.

There are sins under this caption which do not contain much malice but are disturbing to life, and they are especially disturbing to one's spiritual life. There are peevish, complaining people, who do not seem to mean much harm, but keep themselves in a state of dissatisfaction which renders their spiritual growth impossible. They grow old without any of the grace and beauty of character which should mark a Christian old age. One knows old people who have been in intimate contact with the Church and the sacraments for many years but do not show any signs of having reached our Lord through them. They are dissatisfied and complaining and critical and generally disagreeable so that the task of those who take care of them is rendered very disheartening. What is the trouble? Has there never been any true spiritual discipline, but only a certain superficial conformity to a spiritual rule? When old age comes the will is weakened and the sense of self-respect undermined, with the result that what the person has all along been in reality, now comes to the surface and is, perhaps for the first time, visible to every one.

Envy is closely related to pride on the one hand and to covetousness on the other. It begins in the perception of another's superiority, and carries its victim through the feeling of hurt pride at the contrast with himself to desire for that which is not his own. The envious person covets the qualities of possessions of another, while vividly denying that they are in fact superior to his own, except, it may be, in certain apparent and not very valuable aspects. The contrast between the superior and the inferior has one of two results: either the inferior is stirred to admiration, or he is stirred to a greater or less degree of envy.

It was thus that contact with our Lord revealed the reality of men. It was a very true judgment to associate with him. His apostles were simple men who never thought of putting themselves in comparison with Him: the more they knew Him the more wonderful He seemed to them. We feel all through the Gospel story what an overwhelming impression His personality made upon men. There is no criticism raised on His character from any point of view. His enemies fell back on the accusation of blasphemy growing out of His claims, an accusation that would be true, if the claims were not true. What we really discover in those who oppose Him is envy, envy of the influence He exercises over others, envy stirred by His obvious superiority to themselves.

Envy is one of the sins of which we are least conscious. When people affirm that they envy others this or that: their leisure, their beauty, or what not, they clearly do not envy them at all, but are mildly covetous of the things that they see others possess. Where envy does show its presence and where we do not recognise its nature, is in that horrible inclination to depreciate others which is visible in certain characters. They seem never to hear another mentioned but they try to think of something which limits the praise bestowed upon him, or altogether counteracts it. It seems to be an instinctive hostility to superiority as involving an implied criticism of one's own inferiority. It is that curious love of the worst that lies at the root of gossip.

And what about the last of the deadly sins, the sin of sloth? One is almost tempted to say that it is at once the least obvious and the most destructive of all the deadly sins. That would no doubt be somewhat of an exaggeration, but it would not be very far off the truth. It is spiritual sloth that prevents us from considering as we should the spiritual problems that are presented to us, and therefore prevents us from gaining their promise. It is the quality in humanity that blocks the consideration of the new on the ground that we already know and can gain nothing by further exertion. The Jewish religious leaders declined the intellectual and spiritual effort of considering our Lord's claims; they just set them aside unconsidered. And is not that just what we are constantly doing, and what constitutes the most pressing danger of the spiritual life? We will not consider the future as the field of constantly new opportunity and therefore new stages of growth. We do not want to make the effort that is implied in that attitude.

Our sloth binds us hand and foot and delivers us to the enemy. There are no doubt some who cry out: "But I am not at all slothful; I am busy from morning to night; of whatever else I may be guilty, it is not of sloth!" My friend, busy people are quite often the most slothful people that there are. They are busy dodging their rightful duties and the opportunities that God offers them, all day long. Have you never discovered that when you had something that you ought to do and do not want to do, that the easiest method by which you can still your conscience is to make yourself terribly busy about something else, and then to tell yourself that the reason why you have not done what you know that you ought to have done is that really you have not had time? Do you not know that being busy is one of the most effective screens that you can put between your conscience and your obligation? Do you not know that tens of thousands of men and women to-day are putting the screens of good works, of social service of some sort, between their souls and the worship of God and the practice of the sacraments? Beware lest while you wear yourself out with activity your besetting sin be found to be sloth!

And shall we find there on the Way of Sorrow the virtues that are the opposite of the Seven Sins? Perhaps, if we had time to look, or had sufficient knowledge of the crowd that lines the way. There are certain women over there wailing and lamenting; perhaps they could help us. In any case we know that there is one woman who has succeeded in keeping near whose love of Jesus is so intense that it will enable her to overcome all obstacles and be near Him to the very last. Jesus as He staggers along the way and falls at length under the intolerable weight of the Cross is the embodiment of all virtues and of all spiritual accomplishment, and his blessed Mother through His grace has been kept pure from all sin. She will show the perfection of purely human accomplishment. She is the best that humanity in union with the Incarnate Son has brought forth. We have seen—we have caught glimpses of her life through what the Scriptures tell us of her—how completely she has responded to grace in all the actions of her life. Not much do the Scriptures say, but what they do say is like the opening of windows through which we catch passing aspects of her life which we feel are perfectly characteristic and revealing.

And we have seen there, or we may see, may we not? the virtues which are the work of the Holy Spirit enabling us to overcome the deadly sins. We have seen the humility with which, without thought of self, she answered God's call to be the Mother of His Son. We have seen the liberality with which she places her whole life at God's disposal, withholding nothing from the divine service. Purity undefiled had been God's gift to her from the first moment of her existence. Hers too was that meekness which willingly accepted all that the appointment of God brought her, showing in her acceptance no withholding of the will, no trace of self-assertion. Hers was the great virtue of temperance, the power of self-restraint and self-discipline, which suppressed all movements of nature that would be contrary to God's will. There too was the love of the brother and of the neighbour which is the contrary of envy; and there was the eagerness in fulfilling the will of God which is the opposite of sloth.

We have then two spotless examples,—how shall we not be stirred to follow them! There is Jesus manifesting the qualities of His sinless life, of the life of God's election, of humanity as God wills it to be, and as it ultimately will be when it gives itself to His will; and Mary in whom we see the work of God's grace perfectly accomplished by virtue of her perfect response to the love of her Sen. We look at these two lives and we see what is possible for us. We do not say, we cannot say, these things are too wonderful and great for me. We can only say, through the grace of God which is given me, "I can do all things." It is not my inevitable destiny that I should abide a sinner. I have the choice of being a sinner or a saint.

MARY: Ever I cried full piteously: "Lordings, what have ye i-brought? It is my Son I love so much: For God's sake bury Him nought." They would not stop though that I swooned, Till that He in the grave were brought. Rich clothes they around him wound: And ever mercy I them besought.

* * * * *

They said there was no better way But take and bury him full snel. They looked on my cousin John For sorrow both a-down we fell—

* * * * *

By Him we fell that was My Child. His sweet mouth well full oft I kissed. John saw I was in point to spill, That nigh mine heart did come to break. He held his sorrow in his heart still And mildly then to me did speak: "Mary, if it be thy will Go we hence; the Maudeleyn eke." He led me to a chamber then Where my Son was used to be,— John and the Maudeleyn also; For nothing would they from me flee. I looked about me everywhere: I could nowhere my Sone see. We sat us down in sorrow and woe And 'gan to weep all three.

From St. Bernard's Lamentation on Christ's Passion. Engl. version, probably 13th Cent, by Richard Maydestone.



PART TWO

CHAPTER XVIII

THE CRUCIFIXION

And they crucified him.

S. Matt. XXVII, 35.

In as much as we have no confidence because of our many sins, do thou, O Virgin Mother of God, beseech him who was born of thee; for a Mother's supplication availeth much to gain the benignity of the Master. Despise not the prayers of sinners, O all-august, for merciful and mighty to save is he, who vouchsafed to suffer for us.

BYZANTINE.

We have followed the Way of Sorrows to the very end and now stand on Calvary watching by the Cross, waiting for the death of the Son of God. The mystery of iniquity is consummated here where man in open rebellion against his God crucifies the Incarnate Son. Here is fulfilled the saying: "He came unto His own and His own received Him not." All that man can do to prove his own degredation he has done. In the person of Pilate he has condemned to death a man whom he knows to be innocent. The representative of human justice has denied justice for the sake of his own personal ends. In the person of Herod he has permitted the insult and abuse of One of whom he knows no ill, and has displayed toward Him wanton and brutal cruelty. In the person of the Jewish authorities he has rejected the Messenger of the God whom he recognises as his God, and will not listen to the voice of prophecy because he finds his personal ends countered by the fulfilment of the promises of the religion whose subject he professes to be. In the person of the disciples he shows himself too cowardly and self-regarding to stand by his innocent Master and to throw in his lot with Him. In the person of the people he shows himself cruel, hardened, indifferent to suffering and to justice, ready to be made the tool of unscrupulous politicians, unstable and ignorant. As we look on, we succeed in retaining any shred of respect for humanity only through the contemplation of the exceptions—of S. John and the little group of women who are faithful to the end: above all in the sight of blessed Mary standing by the Cross of her Son.

It is the will of God that our Lord should follow the human lot to the very depth of its possible sufferings. There are no doubt many sufferings of humanity that our Lord does not share, they are those which spring out of personal sin. He in Whom was no sin could not suffer those things which spring from one's own wrong doing. That is one broad distinction between the burdens of the crosses on Calvary, a distinction which the penitent thief caught easily when he said to his reviling fellow-criminal, "Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss." And in as much as a great part of what we suffer is plainly just, the pain we bear is intensified by the knowledge that what we are is the outcome of what we have been. But our Lord, while He does not suffer as the result of His own sin, does suffer as the result of sin in that He wills to bear the result of men's sin by putting Himself at their mercy. He bears the burden of sin to the uttermost, looking down from the Cross at the faces of these men whose salvation He is making possible if in the days to come they will associate themselves with Him. One wonders how many of those who saw Him crucified came, before they died, to accept Him as the Saviour and their God. There must have been many wonderful first Communions in the early Church when those who had rejected Jesus in His humility came to receive Him glorified.

But as we look at this scene of the dying we feel that the powers of evil are working their uttermost, they are driving their slaves to incredible sins. One feels the tremendous power that evil is as one looks at these human beings who are body and soul wholly under its dominion. The Power of Darkness appears utterly in control of the world of humanity; but we know that this moment in which its triumph seems most complete is in fact the moment in which its defeat is at hand. The victory that is being won is the victory of the Vanquished: and the moment when the victory of evil seems assured by the dying of Jesus, is in fact the moment when the chains of the slaves of sin are broken, and men who will to be free are henceforth free indeed. From that moment a new freedom is within the reach of men, the freedom which comes to them through their participation in the redemption wrought for them by God. Presently S. John will announce the great message of freedom to the Church, a message that he will tell in his own wonderful simplicity, a simplicity which almost deceives us as to its unfathomable depth of love and mystery: "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.... We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not: but He that was begotten of God keepeth him, and the evil one toucheth him not. And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life."

This is what the dying of Jesus achieved for us, that we should be free as men had never been free, and that we should be strong as men had never been strong.

On their crosses the thieves agonise in the realisation of the sin that has brought them there; but our Lord, Who is free from sin, looks out on the scene before Him in a wonderful detachment from His personal suffering. Being without sin our Lord is without egotism, and never treats life from that purely personal standpoint that we are constantly tempted to adopt. Our own needs, our own interests, occupy the foreground and determine the judgment; and we are rarely able to see in dealing with the concrete case that our own interests are ultimately indentical with the interests of the whole Body. The lesson that if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, that we are partners in joy and sorrow alike, is almost impossible of assimilation by the radical individualists that we are. Our theories break down before the test of actuality. But our Lord was not an individualist. He, in His relations with men, is the Head of the Body; and He admits no division of interests between His members. He therefore can think of the needs of others while He Himself is undergoing the last torture of death. He can impartially judge the separate cases of His members; He can attend to the spiritual welfare of a needy soul; He can think of His own death as an act of sacrifice willed by God, and not as a matter concerning Himself alone; and in doing these things He teaches us a much-needed lesson of the handling of life.

No lesson is to-day more needed because we are more and more being influenced to treat life as a private matter. I have spoken of this before and need not elaborate it now; but I do want to insist, at whatever risk of repetition, that a Christian must, if his religion mean anything at all, look on the interests of the Body, not as a separate group of interests to which he is privileged or obligated to contribute such help as seems to him from time to time appropriate, but as in fact his own primary interests because his true significance in the world is gained through his membership in the Body. His life is hid with Christ in God and his conversation is in heaven. The life that he now lives in the flesh he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him. To assert separate interests is to break the essential relation of his life. He is nothing apart from the Body but a dry and withered branch fit for the burning. No doubt our egotism rebels against this view of life, but it is certain that it is the view of the Christian Religion. If we would realise the ideals of the Religion we must act as those who are in constant relations with the other members of the Body and whose life gets its significance through those relations.

There is no more outstanding lesson of our Lord's life than this. It is true from whichever angle you look at it. If you think of our Lord as a divine Person it is at once evident how much of His meaning is included in His relations to the other Persons of the Blessed Trinity. He claims no independent will; it is the will of the Father that He has come to do. He claims no original work: it is the work that the Father has given Him to do that He is straightened until He accomplish. He has no individual possession, but all things that the Father has are His. Considered as God, our Lord is One Person in the one divine nature, no Unitarian interpretation of Him is possible. On the other hand, if you look at Him as Incarnate, as having identified Himself with humanity, He is in that respect made one with His brethren. He has made their interests His, and as their new Head is opening for them the gate of the future. He is inviting them into union with Himself, that in the status of His "brethren" and "friends" they may be also the true children of the heavenly Father. There is no hint anywhere that these things may be accomplished apart from Him, in individual isolation: indeed, if they could be so accomplished the Incarnation would be meaningless. He is the Way and no one cometh to the Father but by Him. He is the Truth, and no one knows the Father but he to whom the Son reveals Him. He is the Life, and no one spiritually lives except through His self-impartation. "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life. He that eateth me, even he shall live by me." In this outlook from the Cross which we recognise in our Blessed Lord when, forgetting His own sufferings in His appreciation of the needs of others, we see Him still fulfilling His ministry of mercy and of sympathy, we are certain that His eyes would rest upon one group which could not fail to pierce His heart with its pathos and tragedy. Our Lord's love is not a general, impersonal love of humanity; it is always love of a person. He no doubt felt a special love for this thief who appealed to Him from the cross by His side. In the whole course of His life our Lord had shown His oneness with us in that He loved special people in a special way. He loved Lazarus and his sisters, He loved S. John. Above all others He loved His Blessed Mother. And now looking down from the Cross He sees that the disciple whom He loved was succeeded in leading His mother into the very shadow of the Cross. How S. Mary had made her way there we do not know: only love knows how it triumphs over its obstacles and comes forth victorious. There is Blessed Mary, looking up into the face so scarred and bleeding, and there is the Son, looking down through the blinding blood into the face of the mother. This is the supreme human tragedy of Calvary. We can only stand and watch the exchange of love.

And then comes the word—the word, by the way, which when it was spoken years ago in Cana of Galilee, men have interpreted as a harsh and rebuking word, with how much truth this scene tells—then comes the word: "Woman, behold thy son." In His love He gives her that which He had so much loved, the friendship of S. John. He brings together those who had so supremely loved Him in an association which would support them both in the trial of their loss. "Woman, behold thy son; behold thy mother." Bitter as was their sorrow in this hour, we know that they were marvellously comforted by this power of love which is able to transcend suffering and death. We know, because we know how utterly our Lord is one with us, that it was much to Him to look on the face that bent over Him in the Manger in Bethlehem. We know, because we know the perfect woman that was Mary, that there was deep joy as well as deep agony in being able to stand there at the last beneath the Cross.

Do you think that we are going too far when we see in S. Mary not simply the mother of our Lord, but when we also see in her a certain representative character? Does she not represent us in one way and S. John represent us in another, in this supreme exchange of love? Do we not feel that in S. John we have been recommended to the love and care of Mary who is our mother? Do we not feel that in S. John the mother has been committed to our love and care? Surely, because we are members of her Son we have a special relation to S. Mary, and a special claim upon her, if it be permitted to express it in that way. It is no empty form of words when we call her mother, no exaltation of sentimentalism. The title represents a very real relation of love. It brings home to us that the love of Mary is as near infinite as the love of a creature can be, and that like the love of her Son it is an unselfish love. She is necessarily interested in all the members of the Body, and their cares and joys and sorrows she is glad to make her own. She is very close to us in her love and sympathy; she is very ready to help us with her prayers. We never go to her for succour but she hears us. "Behold thy son," her divine Son said to her on the Cross in His agony, and all who are members of that Son are her sons too. Her place in heaven above all creatures, most highly favoured as she is, is a place to which our prayers penetrate, and never penetrate unheard. For that other Son, through whose merits she is what she is, whose Face she ever beholds as the Face alike of her Redeemer and her Child, is ever ready to hear her intercessions for us because they come to Him with the power and the insight that perfect purity and perfect sympathy alone can give. So for us there is intense personal consolation in this word: "Behold thy mother."

But there is another side to this committal. It is mutual: "Behold thy son." If we can see ourselves in S. John, committed to the Blessed Mother, we can also see ourselves in S. John to whom the blessed mother is committed. "Behold thy mother." There is a sense in which the blessed mother is committed to us; to-day she is our care. We see the fulfillment of this trust in the love and reverence wherewith Christendom from the beginning has surrounded S. Mary. It has accepted the charge with a passionate devotion. The growth of devotion to her is recorded in the vast literature of Mariology which comes to us from all parts and all eras of the Catholic Church. The details of the expression of this devotion have been wrought out through the centuries with loving care, and the result is that wherever there is a Catholic conception of religion, either in East or West, there is a grateful response to our Lord's trust of His Blessed mother to His Church in the person of S. John.

We feel, do we not? that it is one of the great privileges of our spiritual life that we have found a personal part in this trust, that it is permitted us to preserve and hand on this reverence for Blessed Mary, and in so doing to gain personal contact with her as a spiritual power in the Kingdom of God. It means much to us that we can have the love and sympathy which are blended with her intercession, that we can associate our prayers with hers in the time of our need. Much as we value the sympathy and prayers of our friends here, we cannot but feel that in Mary we have a friend whose helpfulness is stimulated by a great love and directed by deep spiritual insight into the reality of our needs. We turn therefore to her with the certainty of her co-operation.

Our Lord on the Cross had now fulfilled His mission in the care of individual persons, had prayed for His tormentors, had forgiven the penitent thief, and had commended those who were the special objects of His love to one another, and could now turn His thoughts away from earth to the love of the Father. His last words are intimate words to Him. They express the agony that tears His soul as the Face of the Father is for a moment hidden, and the peace of an accomplished work as He surrenders Himself into the hands of the Father that sent Him. He who had been our example all His life, showing us how to meet life, is our example in death, showing us how to meet death.

But just wherein does the dying of Christ become an example for us? This final surrender to the Father of a will that had never been separate from the Father,—what can we derive from all that? There are many lines of approach and application. I can only touch on one or two:—

"I have glorified Thee on the earth," our Lord said in the last wonderful prayer, "I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do." And here on the Cross He repeats, "It is finished." When we think of this we are impressed with the steadiness with which our Lord pursued His purpose, with the way He concentrated His whole life upon His work. He declined to be drawn aside by anything irrelevant to it. People came to Him with all sorts of requests, from the request that He will settle a disputed inheritance to the request that He will become their king; and He puts them all aside as having no pertinence to His mission. It is interesting to go through the Gospel and note just what are the details of this winnowing process; mark what our Lord accepts as relevant to His mission and what not. He is never too occupied or tired to attend to what belongs to His work. An ill old woman or idiot child is important to Him and He attends to them; but He declines the sort of work that will involve Him and His mission in controversy and politics. He is not a reformer of society but a reformer of men. He knows that only by the reformation of men can society be reformed.

There is no doubt much to be learned from the study of our Lord's method of the limits of the social and political activity of His Church. It has constantly fallen a victim to the temptation to undertake the reform of the world by some other means than the conversion of it. It has shown itself quite willing to be made "a judge and divider." It has not always declined the invitation it has received to assume the purple. "Your business is to reform this miserable world which so sadly and so obviously needs you," men say to it; "You are not living up to your principles and you are neglecting your duty by not supporting this great movement for the betterment of the race," others say. Still others urge, "You are losing great masses of men through your inexplicable failure to adopt their cause." And the Church in the whole course of its history has constantly yielded to this temptation, and has not seen until too late that in so doing it was making itself the tool or the cat's-paw of one interest or another whose sole interest in religion was the possibility of exploiting the influence of the Church. In the stupid hope of forwarding its spiritual interests the Church has entangled itself with the responsibilities of temporal power; it has made itself the backer of "the divine right of kings"; and it has found itself bound hand and foot in the character of a national or state Church; and with a curious incapacity to learn anything from experience is now enthusiastically cheering for democracy! Poor Church, whose leaders are so constantly misleaders.

It is all due to the hoary temptation to try to get to one's end by some sort of a short cut: "All these things will I give you if you will fall down and worship me." Our Lord knew that Satan could not really give Him the ends He was seeking; but His followers are constantly confident that he can, and are therefore his constant and ready tools for this or that party or interest. They sell themselves to monarchy or democracy, to capital or labour, with the same guileless innocence of what is happening to them, with the same simple-minded incapacity to learn anything from the lessons of the past. There are no short cuts to spiritual ends, and those ends can never be accomplished by secular means. The interests of the Kingdom of God can never be forwarded by alliance with the powers of this world; the interests of particular persons or parties in the Church may be—but that is quite another thing.

The lesson is one that is not without application to the individual life. There again the tendency to mind something other than one's own business is almost ineradicable. We have before us the work of building our spiritual house, of finishing the work that the Father has given us to do, of carrying to a successful conclusion the work of our sanctification. In view of the experience of nearly two thousand years of Christianity and of our own personal experience, that would seem a sufficiently difficult and obligatory work to occupy the undivided energies of a life-time. But we are accustomed to treat this primary business of life quite as though it were a parergon, a thing to play with in our unoccupied hours, the fad of a collector rather than the supreme interest of an immortal being. That spiritual results are no oftener achieved than they are can occasion no surprise when one understands the sort of spirit wherewith they are approached. If the average man adopted toward his business the attitude he adopts toward his religion he would be bankrupt within a week,—and he knows it. You know that the attention you are paying to religion and the sort of energy and sacrifice you are putting into it are insufficient to secure any sort of a result worth having. Spiritually speaking, your life is an example of misdirected and dissipated energy. There is no spiritual result because there is no continuous and energetic effort in a spiritual direction. You are not like a master-builder planning and erecting a house. You are like a child playing with a box of blocks who begins to build a house with them and, when it is half built, is attracted by something else and runs after that—not even waiting to put the blocks back into the box!

Life, no doubt, this modern city life into which we are plunged, is terribly distracting. Concentration upon a single aim is hard to attain. So we plead in our excuse, but the excuse is a false one and we know it. We know it because we know many people who have achieved the sort of concentration and simplicity of aim that we complain of as so difficult. They to be sure have other ends than those we claim to be ours, but that would not seem to be important. By far the greater part of the male population of this city is intensely concentrated in money making. I do not believe that I have overheard during the last year two men talking in a car or on the street who were not talking about money. There is a good enough example of the possibility of concentrating on a single end under the conditions of our life. There are other people, you know some of them, whose lives are devoted in the most thorough manner to the pursuit of pleasure. They find no difficulty in such concentration, and they afford an even better example of what we are discussing than the money-makers. The money-maker says, "I have to live and my family has to live, and we cannot live unless I devote myself to business. It is all very well to talk about spiritual interests, but those are the plain common sense facts. A man who spends all his time on religion will find it pretty difficult to live in New York." Very well, that seems unanswerable. But go back to the men and women whose sole interest is amusement—how do they live? In some way they seem to have so succeeded in subordinating business to pleasure that they get what they want, and they somehow escape starvation!