Mgr. Jeantel, the President of the College, just managed to escape to the mountains, M. Néron, the Rector of the College of Ki-Yink was captured, and only freed by a heavy ransom. In a few weeks the Annamitish Seminary, the work of years, and the most hopeful nursery of Christian civilization, was entirely broken up. The College of Ke-Non only escaped a similar fate by a payment of 10,000 francs. Amidst these hard trials, M. Theurel had the great consolation of finding his friend Venard with the Bishop. Though destined for China, he had as yet no appointment, and at the request of M. Guillemin, the missionary of Canton, undertook to instruct a young Chinese in philosophy. After he had been thus employed for fifteen months, his destination was changed by his superiors. "Instead af China," he wrote, "it is to be Tongkin. I shall not be the loser by the exchange. I should have been well content with either, but for the mission conducted by Mgr. Retord, West Tongkin, so rich in glorious recollections, I have a double affection." Great was the joy of the two friends in again meeting. "One must remember that all things are possible to GOD," writes Theurel; "to believe that Venard and I are again together! He will speak the language excellently, and whilst he is studying I shall go to the press until another storm breaks out."

'The Miracles of our Lord, as illustrating the Doctrine of Purgatory.

XI.-CURE OF THE MAN WITH THE WITHERED HAND. (St. Matt. xii. 9–14; St. Mark iii. 1-6; St. Luke vi. 6—11.)

1. WE have seen that our Lord healed the poor man whom He found lying in one of the porches of the Probatic Pool on the Sabbath day, although the lesson with regard to the doctrine of Purgatory which was drawn from that miracle did not refer to the particular point. The student of the Life of our Lord will be aware that, just at the period of which we are speaking, He took occasion, more than once or twice, to assert very clearly, by word and action, that the Jewish tradition which seemed to forbid the exercise of good works on the Sabbath, if they were ever so little laborious in themselves, was a false tradition, and one by which He was not Himself in any way bound. It was soon after the miracle at the Probatic Pool that the disciples were blamed by the Pharisees for plucking the ears of corn and rubbing them in their hands on the Sabbath. On this occasion our Lord again defended Himself for permitting this, as He had defended Himself most formally and at great length at Jerusalem after the working of the miracle lately mentioned. It seems also to have been a little later, after His return to Galilee, that He worked the miracle on which we are now to comment, with the same purpose of enlightening men as to the observance of the Sabbath, and with the result-which appears to have been the reason why the three historical Evangelists all mention

the occurrence of driving His enemies to the mad and impious step of making a plot against His life.

2. One circumstance is found the same in all the miracles wrought by our Lord on the Sabbath day-that is, that He worked them unasked, except so far as the simple presence of the poor sufferers was a silent but eloquent prayer to His Sacred Heart. He worked them in different parts of the country, as if it had been a special object with Him to draw attention everywhere to the doctrine which He taught and the authority which He claimed about the Sabbath. In their narratives of the miracle of which we are speaking, the Evangelists tell us that He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath, and that there was then present a man who had a withered hand. The Pharisees and others watched Him to see what He would do, for the question raised by His act at Jerusalem at the Probatic Pool had already made a great stir. St. Matthew tells us that His enemies actually put the question to Him, whether it was lawful to heal on that day. This must refer to some few of the party, for the other Evangelists only mention that they watched Him, and that He knew their thoughts, and asked them the question Himself, whether it was lawful on the Sabbath to do good or bad, to save life or destroy it? They were silent, and then He probably added, as St. Matthew tells us, the words which imply His own answer, asking them which of them would not help out a sheep which had fallen into a pit on the Sabbath-how much better was a man than a sheep! St. Mark tells us that He looked round with anger, being grieved at their blindness of heart. Then our Lord bade the man with the withered hand stand in the midst, and asked them the same question, as if to show that He was about to answer it by deed as well as by word. He bade the man stretch forth his hand; he did so, and it was at once made whole.

3. It is not our business here to draw out our Lord's reasons, as far as we can divine them, for thus insisting, in

the teeth of opposition, on the Christian liberty of doing good on the Sabbath day. But we may gather from it a very profitable and practical head of instruction as to our own special subject of Purgatory, by reminding ourselves that the Sabbath day, in our Lord's Life, represented to Him the great chain of festivals, the anniversaries of His mysteries, and the like, which was afterwards to exist in His Church, and that He was about to enact, as it were, the Law of the Sabbath in a new form, in the institution of all the ecclesiastical festivals and solemnities with which we are so familiar. The Church, acting by the authority over the Sabbath which belonged to Him as the Son of Man, was to transfer the observance from the seventh day of the week to the first, as well as to spiritualize the mode in which the precept of the Sabbatical rest was to be obeyed. Our Lord was looking forward to this feature in His Kingdom in all that He did and said with regard to the Sabbath. It seems to have moved Him even to anger and indignation when He saw His critics so blind of heart as to object to the performance of works of active mercy on that day. But we may venture to think that He might not perhaps have acted or spoken so strongly in opposition to the religious prejudices of the Jews, unless He had meant to insist on a principle which directly contravened those prejudices-the principle that feasts and holy days and religious solemnities and commemorations were to be times of rejoicing and of spiritual activity, great occasions for the exercise of mercy and charity on the part of Christians, and for the bountiful diffusion of graces and spiritual gifts on the part of GOD. Thus Christians have always considered that they might hope for special and large gifts of grace on occasion of the great solemnities of the ecclesiastical year, the days on which the chief mysteries of our Lord or of His Blessed Mother or of the Saints are commemorated. The Church encourages this belief in a number of different ways, one of which, which has especial relation to our own subject, is the connecting

her greater indulgences with the more solemn feasts. Thus it may be said to be a principle of the new Kingdom of our Lord, that the great acts and mercies of GOD, whether in the life of our Lord Himself, or in the lives of His Saints, or in the history of the Church, should have each their special commemoration, as the great consummation of the work of Creation had its special commemoration in the observance of the Sabbath. But the observance of the Sabbath was not a simple commemoration, but also an institution full of benefit to mankind for many various reasons. Indeed, there can be no such institution in the Kingdom of GOD as a simple commemoration of past mercies, which is not also an occasion for the obtaining of fresh benefits from His inexhaustible and ineffable goodness. And, in the same way, the festivals of our Lord, His Mother, and the Saints, which are occasions of intense joy to the Church in Heaven and on earth, are also intended by GOD to be opportunities which He may take, in His infinite bountifulness, of pouring out ever fresh and fresh blessings upon those who celebrate them devoutly.

4. There are many reasons for thinking that, among the many ways in which we may please GOD at such times, that of praying especially for the deliverance of the Holy Souls is not the least. This act of mercy belongs, it may seem, as of right to the great moments of triumph in our Lord's history, and to the anniversaries which celebrate them. It is thought by many holy writers that, on Holy Saturday, after our Lord's descent "into the lower parts of the earth," as St. Paul speaks, He not only set free from their captivity the saints who were detained in Limbus, but that He also made His presence felt in Purgatory by the deliverance either of all the souls which were then suffering pain, or at least, as St. Thomas seems to think, of all those who by their faith and devotion while alive had merited that He should so deliver them. St. Vincent Ferrer says that if the number of the delivered from Purgatory on that occasion was measured by rigorous justice, it would not