unpaid-for pains in developing our powers, we not only felt grateful to them, but a certain responsibility in corresponding to their pains.

Faint shadow all, all human love, care, thoughtfulness, of the ever-present all-comprehending love of God, of which it too is (though one of the least) a fruit !

This is the true greatness of man-to belong to God, enfreed by God to become freely the slaves of the love of God. For the inconceivable greatness of man is, to have been made by God for Himself; to have been made by Him, Who Alone is Greatness; Alone, Goodness; Alone, Wisdom; Alone, Majesty; Alone, Infinite Love; nay, Who Alone Is; and Who, being Alone the Source of being, Alone can bestow true glory and greatness; and the glory and greatness which He bestows, must be in some created likeness of Himself, since there is no ideal greatness and goodness and glory out of Himself, for which He could form us.

The only adequate object of existence is to exist for God. The only adequate pattern of perfection which to copy, is Almighty God, or God made Man; Man, Who was therefore perfect, because He was also Almighty God. The one unvarying interest in this life, or of this life, is that God cares for us, God loves us, God, Whose Being is ever to communicate Himself, Whose mode of existence within Himself is in a continual communication of Himself,-the Father to the Son, and the Father and the Son, as One, to the Holy Spirit, Who is the Bond of Both,-has created us, to whom to communicate Himself; that He wills that we should be little likenesses of Himself; and, lest we should lose any or all of the perfection which He designed for us, watches as well as guards us so minutely, is so jealous that nothing out of Him should divide our

hearts with Him, supplies us with such graces, visits us with inspirations, appeals to us by calls and re-calls and re-recalls, immerses us in Sacraments, provides a fresh Sacrament anew for us for every fresh fall, will not let us go, lest we should miss the end for which He created us,-Himself. The measure of our greatness is God's care for us, His protection of us against ourselves, His anxiety to preserve us for Himself.

This is the great end of our being, to be won by correspondence to Divine grace, the possession of Almighty God. God has willed to make us, not like the Angels to whom He unveiled His glory at once, and left it to them to choose or to refuse Him, to exist, each in that separate order in which He had created them. To us, whom (it is the common Theological opinion) He created to fill up their ranks, broken by the fall of those who fell, He has given an almost immeasurable power of progress. Progress, the love of which, well or ill-aimed, is the ruling principle of all but stagnant minds, is our perfectibility. We have no choice but progression or regression. And this progression is by us here unimaginable. For we see something of some of the qualities which gleam through men's looks or words; we see a supernatural light illumining what is of earth. But what the sum of all shall be, what relation all shall bear to the sitting on the right hand or the left of Jesus in His kingdom, it is reserved for the Day of Judgment to declare. We know of an especial nearness of those who shall sit on the twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. We know of that Virgin-band who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. It has been said of more, I think, than one, that God had revealed that he was for his burning love received among the Seraphim. But, even as it is One

in our nature, Who is for ever personally united with the Godhead, so-above all the highest creatures, whom God either has or ever will create, in a special dignity and nearness, one and alone, (even as the Incarnation, God made Man, is one and alone,) must she exist, with whose flesh God the Son willed that His Flesh should be consubstantial, whose flesh He in His own deified, whom on earth He willed to obey as His own Mother. This dignity of unspeakable nearness to Himself, He, plainly, ever predestined for her, and in one instant He bestowed it on her but by what giant progress in graces, by what undeviating correspondence to Divine vouchsafements in time, must that soul have been formed, to whom, in her fourteenth year (it is thought) was vouchsafed the choice which, by Divine grace, she accepted at the risk of shame and reproach, that of her, ever-Virgin, should be born the Saviour of the world, her God. Yet her Son pronounced her more blessed for her obedience. than for her Mother's care of Himself. This progress, from the lowest scarce-saved soul to that Throne which is most encompassed by the effulgence of the Divine, has but one limit-time. No bound is there to the rich accumulated succession of Divine graces; no limit to the intensity of the Divine power of grace, except our grace-acquired, grace-gifted, capacity to receive it; no term to the development of our capaciousness to contain God, except this, that growth must be in this life, in time. After this life, if by God's mercy we attain, is the everlasting fruition of God, in that degree, to which by Divine grace we have been enlarged in this life. But growth is no more. Ever-enlarging knowledge of the Infinite Wisdom of God there will doubtless be; everunfolding will be the treasures of Divine love. But as, here, we are men, not Angels; and as Angels are not

Archangels, nor Archangels Cherubim or Seraphim, or Thrones, or Dominions, or Powers, and as each Angel is thought to have his own special perfection and beauty, so we shall each, in all eternity, remain that special soul, which here we, by our use of the grace of God in time, became. At the great account, we are to receive according to the deeds done in the body, whether good or bad; then are the five or two talents to be bestowed on each, according to our faithfulness in cultivating whatever God has entrusted to us. Paul, glorious as he will be, he to whom to live was Christ, he, by whose mouth Christ spake, he, in whom Christ inworked, whom He empowered mightily, will be evermore that glorious spirit which, by God's ever-inworking Spirit, he became, (whom may we, though afar, behold, and joy in his joy in Christ!); but he will be evermore that, which through his zeal and sufferings and love of Christ he in time became, and no other. John, too, will be there, with all that love which he drank in when he lay on Jesus' bosom, which he drew, hour by hour, from the love of Jesus Who loved him, and still more perhaps from that martyrdom of threescore years and ten, during which his soul was parched with thirst to behold again his Lord and his God, Whom he loved. Yet is he the same John, who, through that long privation of the sight of Him Whom his soul loved, was formed for the eternal love of God and Jesus. There is Peter, with his soul of fire, through whom Jesus first admitted both Jews and Gentiles into His blessed fold; his soul on fire with all that love, which the look of Jesus kindled in him when fallen; love, augmented all his life long by his penitent remembrance of the occasion of that love, by his loving joy in partaking of the sufferings of Christ and his loving faithfulness in feeding His Master's sheep,

anew committed to his care. Yet is he the same, which by all that fiery zeal and love, penetrated through and through by the Spirit of God, he became.

This, then, is the measure of the value of time, the possession of God, the greater or lesser possession of Him, Who is all Goodness, all Wisdom, all Beauty, all Sweetness, "the Fountain of all knowledge, the Fountain of eternal light, the Torrent of pleasure," the allsufficing Beatitude of all creation, yea, of all possible creations. For He may be possessed in an all-but-infinite variety of degrees, infinite to us, who have no measure by which to measure them; degrees, as far removed from us as the furthest star, whose light has visited this earth, is in space; yet all infinitely below the infinity of our God. But in this all-but-infinite range of beatitudes, there is a growth almost unbounded, so that even if we have chosen God Alone for our Portion, we might still, by His grace, rise as much above what we are, as Heaven is above earth. For there are no limits to the might of the grace of God, except those which we ourselves put to it; no limit to the height, Alps over Alps arising, to which each formerly-attained height seemed like a dead plain, except our lingering in the plain of the devoted cities, when Angels' hands are leading us on, yea, when the Lord of the Angels bears us up by His pierced Hands, bids us tread safely on the lion who would devour us, and beats down Satan under our feet.

Did you ever see any one perfect? The blessed Saints of God knew that they were not. The graces, which God most worked in them, seemed to them the most imperfect, because in them the film was most cleared from their eyes, and, though through a glass darkly, they saw something of the perfection of God. Every