sus; and because of faith--love. He is the beginning and end of all struggle; without Him, labor and almsgiving, absolution and communion, are all in vain. He is in them all, but we must find Him in them.

Beloved, my whole argument in connection with this solemn service upon which we are now to enter, will have made you realize that it is the blessed mission of the Christian priest to stand in Christ's stead as the steward of His mysteries, to speak to struggling souls the words of comfort and of peace. It is his to proclaim the word of life, to tell of the love stronger than death of Him who died that we might conquer. It is his to pour the mystic laver, and to be the minister who, through the power of the Holy Ghost, makes even the unconscious child a member of Christ and an heir of heaven. It is his to bear the awful commission, "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." It is his to plead the one sacrifice once offered, each time that upon the earthly altar the hidden glory beams upon the eye of faith. It is his to bind up the broken, to bring again the outcast, and to stand with the incense of his supplications rising to heaven, like Aaron "between the dead and the living until the plague is stayed." It is his to be the ambassador of unfailing power and eternal strength, and, over this world's battlefields, to bear in triumph the banner of that faith "which is the victory that overcometh the world." It is his to open wide the gates for the majestic march of the King of Glory, "who is the Lord of hosts, even the Lord mighty in battle." O my friends, how does he need your prayers, lest his hand tremble, or his foot stumble, or his heart fail!

And for you, my brethren, who are to-day to be made

the leaders of the spiritual host, who fain would be the conquerors who shall overcome, consider what St. Paul meant when he said, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." This was the result of a struggle on his own part, the noblest this world has ever witnessed. He beat under his body, and brought it into subjection, lest that by any means, when he had preached to others, he himself should be a castaway. He gave up all things, and had no certain dwelling-place, for a hungry, thirsty, naked, and imprisoned world. In bitterness of sorrow, in the midst of all his labors, he confessed that he was the least of all the apostles, not meet to be called an apostle; and many a time, how often we know not, in the early morning when the night had passed away, he brake the bread of life for weary souls, and was fed himself as he offered for others. As he did all these things in Christ, for Christ, as unto Christ, his natural life became absorbed in the life of his Lord. Each movement of the flesh, each pulsation of passion, each struggle of the earthly spirit, each rising of the will, each revolt of the lower reason, was transfixed and transformed by the nails and the thorns of the Passion of Jesus. Love and faith and hope, and chiefly love, throbbed in their stead; and to him it became a literal truth that "to live was Christ, and to die was gain."

Seek, then, for the two gifts which chiefly made him what he was-Christian courage and Christian love. We live in an age when cowardice in religious matters has been dignified into a virtue. Pray to God to make you bold to do his will. Dare to give up the world, with its pomps and its pleasure and vain applause. Be not afraid of its sneers or laughter, or, what one needs to dread much more, its tenderness and anxiety and solici

tude. It will applaud you as long as you echo its own tone, but it cries out against fasting and prayer, and obedience and penitence, and the ever-recurring Eucharist. Dare to believe in Christ and the Bride of Christ, and to practice what you believe.

But there is another gift without which courage will become rashness; boldness, recklessness. Pray above all things that your souls may be filled with the love of Jesus. Better than knowledge, better than faith, better than all other gifts, is the loftiest of all graces, the love of the Saviour. Without it, good works, if they exist at all, become pharisaical; worship is changed into mere sentimentality; the soul is emptied of every lofty purpose, and withers and wastes. But once let it fill the soul, and the priest is transformed into another being. Ah! this is the hidden difference. He bears about with him the marks of the Lord Jesus. He is bold, yet fearful; strong, yet gentle; persevering, yet patient. Without means, singlehanded, forsaken, even persecuted, he does his work well and bravely. Ay, and when the murky clouds begin to gather in the western sky, when the shadows of the evening fall fast and heavily, when the gloom of the dark mountains deepens about the tottering footsteps, from afar will sound that hymn of triumph St. Paul so long ago began, and which echoes on from age to age: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of glory, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me in that day.".

O, infinite and incomprehensible Light, do Thou illumine them! Most high and unchanging Fortitude, do Thou make them valiant! Unfading and undying Love, be Thou their portion, now and for ever!

XX.

THE STRIFE OF TONGUES.

(Preached at Racine College, October, 1873.)

"Thou shalt hide them privily by Thine own presence from th provoking of all men: Thou shalt keep them secretly in Thy taber nacle from the strife of tongues."-PSALM Xxxi. 22.

THE time in which we live is one of restlessness an hurry. It is a period of eager movement and unceasin activity. It is a day of argument and searching into th foundations of truth. It is a period when authority disregarded, and little is taken for granted. Whatever th virtues or vices of the age, whether it is advancing or g ing backward, this at least is true of it, that it is a time the provoking of all men, and full of the strife of tongue The eager and thoughtless find happiness in all this. is a part of the excitement and noise which satisfies shallo hearts. They would not have it otherwise if they could and, as in the Babel-like confusion voice answers to voic and no one comprehends, they find their happiness in th eager rushing to and fro of an activity which has no resul But to the old, the sick, and the mournful, or to those wh though none of these, yet have learned to weigh carefull the realities of life, the words of the text fall on the es

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with a message of peace: "Thou shalt hide them privily by Thine own presence from the provoking of all men: Thou shalt keep them secretly in Thy tabernacle from the strife of tongues."

To be hid privily by God's presence, to be kept secretly in God's tabernacle-these are the blessings promised

in the text.

There are various ways to which God may be present to us, and I suppose we shall not be wrong in interpreting the words of the Psalmist as referring in some sort, not to one alone, but to all of these, with, however, as is evident from the last part of the text, an especial reference to that presence which is in God's tabernacle, whatever that may

mean.

1. God is omnipresent.

2. He is manifested in and through the Incarnate Word.

3. He will be the endless joy of His saints, when He vouchsafes to them at the last the beatific vision.

What is meant by the omnipresence of God?

1. He is the mighty Law, the eternal Force, the invisible power, which moves, controls, and orders all things. The wondrous system of the universe, the order and movement of the heavenly bodies, the marvelous forces, a portion of which science has feebly investigated, and with all its diligence and wondrous discoveries only begun to comprehend; the birth, and growth, and death, and resurrection of all animate life, which in Him lives and moves and has its being; the varied movements of the free will of man, which within certain limits is uncontrolled, and yet, though it freely make every movement a finite nature permits, comes at last to a point where it hears a voice pro