They lift it up before the people's eyes Is that which the great heart hath reprobated. L. Schefer. RESPECT FOR WOMAN TESTS MAN. So much as one holds woman in esteem, L. Schefer. DAILY FAULTS. Never let us be discouraged with ourselves; it is not when we are conscious of our faults that we are the most wicked; on the contrary we are less so. We see by a brighter light, and let us remember for our consolation, that we never perceive our sins till we begin to cure them. We must neither flatter nor be impatient with ourselves, in the correction of our faults. Despondency is not a state of humility; on the contrary it is the vexation and despair of a cowardly pride-nothing is worse; whether we stumble or whether we fall, we must only think of rising again and going on in our course. Our faults may be useful to us, if they cure us of a vain confidence in ourselves, and do not deprive us of our humble and salutary confidence in God. He never makes us feel our weakness but that we may be led to seek strength from him. What is involuntary should not trouble us; but the great thing is, never to act against the light within us, and to desire to follow where God would lead us.-Fenelon. THE LAW OF NATURE. What is the law of Nature? It is the constant and regular order of facts by which God governs the universe; an order which his wisdom presents to the senses and the reason of men, as an equal and common rule for their actions, to guide them, without distinction of country or sect, towards perfection and happiness. The definition of law is, "An order or prohibition to act, with the express clause of a penalty attached to the infraction, or of a recompense attached to the observance of the order." Do such orders exist in Nature? Yes. What does the word Nature signify? It bears three differ ent senses: Ist. It signifies the universe, the material world; in this sense we say, "the beauty (or richness) of nature," that is, the objects of heaven or earth exposed to our sight. 2d. It signifies the power that animates, that moves the universe, considering it as a distinct being, as the soul is to the body; in this sense we say, "The intentions of nature." 3d. It signifies the partial operation of this power on each being, or each class of beings; as we say, "The nature of man is an enigma." What are the characters of the laws of nature? There can be assigned ten principal ones. What is the first? To be inherent to the existence of things, and consequently anterior to every other law; so that all others are only imitations. What is the second? To be derived immediately from God, and presented by him to each man, whereas all other laws are presented to us by men. What is the third? To be common to all times and countries; that is to say, to be one and universal. Is no other law universal? No; for no other is applicable to all people,—they originate from persons and places. What is the fourth character ? To be uniform and invariable. Is no other law uniform and invariable? No; for what one and the same law approves at one time or place it condemns in another. What is the fifth character? To be evident and palpable, constantly present to the senses, and to demonstration. What is its sixth character? To be conformed always to reason as no other laws are. To be wholly just, because the penalties are proportionate to the infractions. What is its eighth? To be pacific and tolerant, because in the law of nature all men being brothers, and equal in rights, it recommends only peace, and toleration, even for errors, to them. What is its ninth? To be equally beneficent to all, in teaching them the true means of becoming better and happier. What is its tenth ? That it is alone sufficient to make men happier and better, because it comprises all that is good and useful in other laws, either civil or religious, essentially the moral part of them; so that if other laws were divested of it, they would become chimerical and imaginary opinions, devoid of practical utility. -C. F. Volney. JESUS OF NAZERETH. He worked at the trade of his father, which was that of a carpenter. This was no humiliating or unwelcome circum stance. The Jewish customs demanded that the man devoted to intellectual labors should understand some occupation. The most celebrated doctors had trades; thus St. Paul, whose education had been so well cared for, was a tent-maker. Jesus was never married. All his power to love was transferred to what he considered his celestial vocation. The extremely delicate feeling which we notice in him toward women never departed from the exclusive devotion which he had to his idea. He treated as sisters, like Francis d'Assisi and Francis de Sales, those women who were enamored with the same work as he; and he had his St. Claires, his Francoise de Chantal. * * * What was the progress of the mind of Jesus during this obscure period of his life? Through what meditations did he launch out into the prophetic career? We are ignorant, his history having come to us in isolated stories, and without exact chronology. But the development of living products is everywhere the same, and there can be no doubt that the growth of a personality so mighty as that of Jesus obeyed rigid laws. A lofty idea of Divinity, which he did not owe to Judaism, and which seems to have been entirely the creation of his great soul, was the foundation of all his power. Here it is that we must, most of all, renounce those ideas with which we are familiar, and those discussions in which small minds wear themselves away. Properly to understand the degree of the piety of Jesus, we must rid ourselves of all that has intruded between the gospel and ourselves. Deism and paganism have become the two poles of theology. The paltry discussion of scholasticisms, the aridity of soul of Descartes, the thorough irreligion of the eighteenth century, by diminishing God, and in some sort limiting him by the exclusion of all that is not him, stifled in the breast of modern rationalism every fruitful feeling of divinity. If God is indeed a determinate being without us, the person who believes that he has private relations with God is a "visionary," and as the physical and physiological sciences have shown us that every supernatural vision is an illusion, the deist who is at all con ΙΟ sistent, finds himself beyond the possibility of comprehending the great beliefs of the past. Pantheism, on the other hand, by denying the divine personality, is as far as possible from the living God of the ancient religions. Were the men who have most loftily comprehended God, Sakya-Mouni, Plato, St. Paul, St. Francis d'Assisi, and St. Augustine, at some moments of their changeful lives, deists or pantheists? Such a question has no meaning. To them the physical and metaphysical proofs of the existence of God would have had no interest. They felt the divine within themselves. In the first rank of this grand family of the true sons of God we must place Jesus. He had no visions; God does not speak to him from without; God is in him; he feels that he is with God, and he draws from his own heart what he says of his Father. He lives in the bosom of God by uninterrupted communication; he does not see him, but he understands him, without need of thunder and the burning bush like Moses, of a revealing tempest like Job, of an oracle like the old Greek sages, of a familiar genius like Socrates, or of an angel Gabriel like Mahomet. He never, for a moment, enounces the sacriligious idea that he is God. He believes that he is in direct communication with God; he believes himself the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God which ever existed in the breast of humanity was that of Jesus. * * * God, conceived immediately as Father, this is the whole theology of Jesus. And that was not with him a theoretical principle, a doctrine more or less proven, and which he sought to inculcate. He used no argument with his disciples; he exacted from them no effort at attention. He did not preach opinions, he preached himself. Often the greatest and most disinterested souls present, associated with a high degree of elevation this peculiarity of perpetual attention to themselves and extreme personal susceptibility. Their persuasion that God is within them, and perpetually caring for them, is so strong that they have no fear of imposing themselves on others; with our reserve, our respect for the opinions of others which is |