in themselves good and desirable-perverted to all manner of evil, operating to the destruction of the soul. It is too often the experience of life. In prosperity we see things in a false light, we think always of ourselves. We forget God; we run after the baubles that fortune holds out to us: we forget the real treasures which are above. But pain dispels the dream. It wakes us with its sharp pang to the reality. From being almost gods, as we think we are, we fall to our proper place, as miserable, dependent creatures, whose very breath and existence is the free gift of the Creator.

Yes, sorrow, grief, pain, beget humility before God, and humility is the first step to eternal salvation.

Naturally, pain, sorrow, ill-success are hard to bear while they last, but when they are gone, when the misery and grief have passed, they leave behind them the bright sunshine of God's grace and pleasure in the soul, which compensates it a thousand times for all that it has undergone. It is St. Paul's teaching: "Now all chastisement for the present indeed seemeth not to bring with it joy but sorrow; but afterwards it will yield to them that are exercised by it, the most peaceable fruit of justice."

This is the true effect of sorrow, it sets us free from earth, lifts us up to heaven and unites us even to God. Oh wonderful mystery! Oh incomprehensible economy ! This is the lesson of the Crucified, this is His message from the Cross. This too is the secret of Mary's strength, that makes her so like her Divine Son. Through Cross and Passion to the Resurrection: through pain to eternal joy; through suffering to everlasting peace. Alas for the man who does not grasp these sacred truths.

This is what our holy religion teaches: Manfully to bear the burden that is sent to us in whatever form

it comes, knowing that it is meant to bring us nearer to God, and to draw us farther away from evil. What though we do not see how it is to accomplish this. We never know our nature as God knows it. We never shall know how many men have been saved forever by patient bearing of life's ills for God's sake. We never can know how many have been eternally lost by refusing to recognize behind the rod that chastens the loving hand of our Heavenly Father.

Some Saints there have been in God's Holy Church who realized so well the dangers of prosperity that they have prayed for sorrow and adversity. St. Ignatius prayed that his order of the Society of Jesus might always be persecuted, and St. Teresa used to cry out in the midst of her agony, "More, God, still more! Let me suffer, not die!"

We cannot hope to aspire to such perfection. If we can but school ourselves to be calm in adversity, to be patient in suffering, to bear the ills and stings of life with a noble Christian equanimity we shall have learned the Christian's lesson of the Mater Dolorosa. Our nature shudders at the sight of grief. But what we can do is to teach our poor nature to bear it all for God. To make our own the prayer of Christ in the midst of His awful Agony, "Father if it be possible let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done." We are not called upon to seek disappointment, dishonor, sickness, poverty, and want; God has raised up His Saints to give the sublime example of such heroic virtue. But we are daily called upon, and must be ever called upon, while we live here below, to meet all misfortunes, when they come to us, with Christian fortitude ; not to rebel against the hand that sends them; not to

do as Job's wife advised him, "curse God and die "; but in sickness as in health, in adversity as in prosperity, in pain as in joy to look up in the midst of our grief to God. It may be hard to bear. It may seem strange that we should be the one to bear it; we may have to look through blinding tears up to the Cross as Mary did. But the faith that is in our hearts, our confidence and hope in God will help us to stand as Mary did. Weak and sore and grieved our nature may be, but inwardly we shall find Peace; for not all the pain of illness, nor the bitter pangs of loss or bereavement can rob us of our trust in God, who chasteneth whom most He loveth, "and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth"; so that after the bitter ills of earth are at an end He may lead them into the Paradise of Eternal Joy where there is "no more death; neither sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."

THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT

"Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled.” ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO TITUS, i, 15.

WE come in the course of our instructions on the commandments to that one on which it is at once most necessary and most difficult to speak-the Sixth Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

It becomes the minister of God to speak the truth without fear of man. Difficult even as it may be to proclaim the law of God in this matter which lies at the very root of all social order, and the lack of observance of which is the sin of modern life, yet we should prove ourselves unworthy followers of Him who was the model of purity and spotlessness, did we through false modesty or weak-heartedness pass by the explanation of this commandment or hesitate to point out the heinousness of this sin therein forbidden and the ruin and disaster it causes to the souls and bodies of its victims. All things are pure unto the pure. Among Christians the Apostle has forbidden the very mention of this vice. Indeed even to speak of it is oftentimes dangerous and unlawful. But here in the house of God, in His own pure presence, before the image of her who is hailed by the Church as Mother of Purity, before the tabernacle where Jesus lives, we may, nay we must, for a while turn our attention to this subject which is embodied in the Law of God and which consequently forms a part of our necessary faith and morals. I beg therefore of each one present to listen

as in the Presence of "Him who knew no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.”

The judgment of the world at large on this matter is to us of less than no value at all. What men in general think of it is no criterion: what society at large considers, of no moment to us. For we know the judgment of the great bulk of humanity in this instance has always been false. We know that in this most delicate of social laws men make little of its non-observance. Therefore we must look beyond the general sentiment of the world to the judgment of God Himself.

God has created in every human breast the sentiment of love. In every heart that beats there wells up this fount of affection. It is an attribute of our nature. It is even a part of the nature of God our Creator, for “God is love." This love, this affection, when properly directed, is the holiest and highest sentiment of which man is capable. But when this natural tide of affection is viciously turned aside, when the human heart turns to anything which is not God or according to the will of God, then follows the sin of lust, the consequence of concupiscence or unlawful desires.

We are soon to commemorate the coming of Christ into the world. One of the great works which He had to accomplish was to establish the law of social purity, to set up the divine standard of chastity, to hold up to men steeped in the love of their own filthiness the model of virginity. One of the painful burdens that lay upon His soul during His awful agony in Gethsemane was to behold in the future of the world He had come to redeem, that this vice would bind again with the shackles of eternal damnation many a soul for whom He had purchased eternal redemption.