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hair-breadth escapes and adventures, which we believed in with a credulity which must have amused him vastly. Or sometimes he would take us with him when he was going on his rounds, talking to us half-seriously, half-humourously, veiling some useful bit of knowledge or wise truth under a fanciful tale or allegory. It did not seem anything wonderful to us then. We did not think any further than that we loved him, but now in the fuller light of years it is something very noble and good to remember.

He had come near the end of a long life when I knew him, and he gave one the impression of having passed by all that was wrong and unworthy, and of having gathered into his life only the warmth and sunniness and love. And it was this which gave to that splendidly handsome face the charm you never forgot, for there you read plainly of gentleness, and loving-kindness, and the overwhelming desire to help others of which his whole life spoke. The brightness of youth hung around him always; and, when he talked to you, you felt the spell of his kind, beautiful face and courtly charm of manner until he might have been the hero "noble and right knightly" of an old romance.

For more than thirty years he spent his life in going out and in among the poor and sad, healing their sickness and comforting their hearts.

I think the people who loved him best were the children, and the frail and aged to whom his visits were the brightest sunshine of their day. In these poor little homes he was loved so dearly for his kind ways and the sweetness of his simple heart. In his brave gentlehood he helped all the lives that crossed his, whether high or low, and in his face the "sweet records" spoke of years. full of kindly ministry. His warm and beautiful life was lived out contentedly in the quaint peacefulness of country ways, and among homely folk. He was a very noble gentleman.

The news of his sudden death swept the country for miles. round into bitter grief; and round his grave the strong men stood weeping like little children. He died in the old house among the people that he lived for, and in their hearts his memory is as sweet and fragrant as the summer flowers, or the scent of the new mown hay when the men and women he loved are gathering in the harvest.

AGNES ROMILLY WHITE

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BONCHURCH.

WILD west wind! you are blowing, blowing,
Wet with the spume of the salt grey sea,

'Twixt the wrack that gathers, the tide that's flowing,
The past that is past, and the days to be.
Through the tangled trees the sea-sand drifting
Over the graves to the old church-wall

Where the sea is encroaching, the low land shifting
To whelm and cover them, one and all!

O sea-gull wild! you are crying, calling

To the deaf dead ears that are laid below,
"In a thousand years where the worm is crawling
The fish will swim, and the tide will flow!"
You are crying, as if to the dead it mattered
Whether here they sleep beneath earth or sea,
Where the faith is dead, and the lamp is shattered,
And the church stands vacant-so let it be!

MONTAGU GRIFFIN.

WHEN

DOMINE DEUS!

WHEN the tide long has left a sun-parched shore,
Where grey rocks raise grim faces to the sky;
When seabirds droop their wings, nor seek to soar,
And, panting, seem sea-nurtured things to lie:
When breath brings no refreshment from the air,
And no sound comes from the far-distant sea,
When pools lie dark and silent as despair:
So, Lord, is life for them who thirst for Thee,
If Thou withhold Thy grace
And hide from them Thy Face.

But when the soft stir of the distant tide

Steals like a song over the waiting strand; When seabirds soar and sail through spaces wide, And panting things are by a cool breeze fanned; When laughing ripples sleeping pools awake,

And seaweeds float and shake their fringes free;
When shy waves creep along the sands and break:
So is life sweet to them who long for Thee,

If Thou bestow Thy grace
And turn to them Thy Face.

J SSIE TULLOCH.

PRIEDIEU PAPERS.

No. XIII.

ON THE EXPediency of bEING ASHAMED OF OURSELves.

THAT

HAT is a very pointed question that St. Paul puts in the sixth chapter of his epistle to the Romans: "What fruit had you in those things of which you are now ashamed?" Let us put this same question to ourselves, and see what answer we can honestly give to it.

But, first, it is well to take notice that the Apostle's question contains not only a rebuke but a compliment. The rebuke is plain enough, for the question supposes that we have done many things for which (to use an expressive Irishism) "we have a right" to be ashamed; and God knows we have. But, besides, the persons addressed are paid the compliment of being supposed not to belong to that most wretched and mose hopeless class of all-those who are incapable of feeling shame, who brazen out their sin, who glory in it, or at least make light of it as if it were a mere matter of course. Worse than doing shameful things is to do them shamelessly; and the hardest epithet you can fling at a scoundrel is to call him an unblushing scoundrel.

The first reparation, then, that we have to make for doing wrong is to be ashamed of having done it. We cannot repent of what we glory in; and on the other hand we have begun already to feel sorrow (not a sufficient or supernatural sorrow perhaps) for that of which we are ashamed. Those persons were at least on the road to repentance and amendment to whom St. Paul first put the question that we are putting now to ourselves.

Shame itself, then, is not one of the things of which we are to. be ashamed. On the contrary, shame, the capacity of being ashamed of what is wrong, is one of the faculties of our rational nature, which distinguishes us from beasts. If we had not souls, we could not blush. St. Thomas of Villanova says that beasts can be struck, killed, burned; but they cannot be put to shame. Jumenta possunt percuti, occidi, cremari; verecundari non possunt. Man has been defined animal risibile, but an ape can make a better attempt at laughing than at blushing. Brutes cannot blush;

and some men sink to the level of brutes in losing utterly their sense of shame.

Like everything else, however, that men possess, it is in their power to apply wrongly this faculty of shame; and it is plainly desirable that we should use it for the proper objects for which is was given to us. But alas, many men are ashamed of the very things of which they ought to feel proud; and they take pride out of the things which ought to bring the blush of shame to their cheeks. For instance, silly and vulgar boys-aye, and silly and vulgar men (often calling themselves gentlemen)—are ashamed of not cursing wickedly enough, of being left behind in the foulness. of their language, of not drinking as much as others, of not being foolish or wicked enough in matters more horrible, more unmentionable than drinking.

In days not long gone by, and even up to the present day in some countries, those who called themselves gentlemen were ashamed of being branded as cowards if they did not consent to fight a duel with every fool or villain that challenged them to risk their lives in that way, and so to run the chance of becoming murderers or else going before the judgment seat of God in the very act of murder and suicide. Whenever we are inclined to imagine that anything patronised by sensible, well educated people cannot be atrociously bad, let us call to mind the detestable practice of duelling which was once imposed as a duty by the cruel tyranny of fashion. Men who pretended to be wise and brave and even good were ashamed of not incurring such guilt as this. They were ashamed to shrink from taking this guilt upon their souls, just as some are ashamed now-a-days of being left behind by comrades in some other custom which involves folly and wickedness, though on a smaller scale.

It is plain, however, that these things and such things as these are not the things for which we are to feel shame. It is not to such matters that the Apostle refers when he asks: "What advantage had you in those things of which you are now ashamed?" It was he himself who said: Non erubesco evangelium, "I am not ashamed of the gospel "; and St. Peter: Si ut Christianus, non erubescat, "If as a Christian any one suffers, let him not be ashamed." Whatever the law or will of God in any way asks from us, of that we must be proud and not ashamed. Ashamed of making the Sign of the Cross, ashamed of paying a

mark of respect in passing a church, ashamed of that weekly overt act of obedience, the Friday abstinence, ashamed of going to confession, ashamed of showing that you are an obedient and faithful Catholic-of these things we must not be ashamed, but we must glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in any share of that cross which may be involved in acting up to our faith and practising Christian virtue.

Let us, then, economise our blushes and not waste them on matters on which our sense of shame was never meant to be exercised. That sense of shame was given to us for wise ends and must be reserved for its proper uses. We need not be ashamed of poverty unless it be (as it often is) our own fault and brought upon us and upon those who depend on us by our extravagance and our idleness. We need not be ashamed of shabby clothes unless they indicate (as they often do) too intimate an acquaintance with the public-house and the pawn-office. But when poverty and shabby clothes are caused by the pawn-office and the public-house, they are a proper subject for shame and confusion; and to these things St. Paul's question applies most pointedly: "what advantage had you in those things of which you are now ashamed?"

Except the various forms and degrees of that vice which is so dangerous and so horrible that the same St. Paul says it must not be even named amongst Christians-that the very thought and mention of it ought to be left to those who are practically pagans not believers in the All-Holy and All-seeing God, not disciples of Jesus Crucified, Son of Mary Immaculate-except the loathsome vice of impurity there is nothing more degrading and therefore more shameful than the brutal vice of intemperance. Indeed in calling it a brutal vice we are unjust even to the brute creation : for the very brutes stop short of such excess. They drink to satisfy a natural thirst, and when nature is satisfied they desist. But the drunkard drinks for the sake of drinking, although he knows that he is dooming himself to sickness, remorse, and many evil results which will force him hereafter to say to himself, "what advantage had you in those things of which you are now ashamed?" And, if those evil consequences were confined to the drunkard himself, we might find it easier to be satisfied and to say "Serve him right!"-But when a patient loving wife and innocent children or even a wife and children who are not patient or loving or innocent (for how can a drunkard's wife and children VOL. XXV. No. 292.

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