Thoughts from Many Hearts.

UR sins are like a little grain of sand by the great mountain of God's mercy.

IT is not possible to know there is no God, no soul, no free-will, no right or wrong; at the most it is only possible to doubt all this.

-BISHOP SPALDING.

IFE passes, riches fly away, popularity is fickle, the senses decay, the world changes, friends die. One alone can be all things to us; One alone can supply our need. -NEWMAN.

He

HOWEVER harsh God may at times appear, He never inflicts needless suffering upon us. gives us pain only in order to purify us. The bitterness of the pain arises from the evil which has to be overcome. He would not probe us were we healthy: He only cuts into our diseased, corrupted parts. It is from our self-love that we suffer most: God's hand spares us as much as possible. -FENELON.

CHE first rule of Christian charity is to believe no evil if we have not seen it, and to be silent if we have seen it. -POPE CLEMENT XIV.

SOW not wishes in other peoples gardens; strive not to be different from what you are, but the very best of what you are.

-AUTHOR OF "GOLDEN SANDS."

E impart to the smallest acts the highest virtue when we perform them with a sincere wish. to please God. The merit of our actions does not depend on their importance.

-ST. FRANCIS DE SALES.

E ought never to think we have done enough when there is a question of eternity.

-ST. GREGORY.

AKE your crucifix in your hand and ask yourselves whether this is the religion of the soft, easy, worldly, luxurious days in which we live; whether the crucifix does not teach you a lesson of mortification, of self-denial, of crucifixion of the flesh. -CARDINAL MANNING.

GOD often visits us, but most of the time we

are not at home.

-ABBE ROUX.

WHAT God means man to be and to do, that and that alone is his duty.

-ABBE HOGAN.

HS men get misty in their notions of the Godman; they become vague in their belief in him whose power that God came to crush.

IT is often the very indistinctness of divine things which enables us to endure them.

-FABER.

CHE world is a mystery. Life, time, death, doubt, good and evil, and the uncertainity which hangs about our eternal lot, are all mysteries. They lie burning on the heart at times. But the crucifix is the meaning of them, the solution of them all. It puts the question and answers it as well. It is the reading of all riddles, the certainty of all doubts the centre of all faiths, the fountain of all hopes, the symbol of all loves. It reveals man to himself and God to man. It holds a light to time that it may look into eternity and be assured. -FABER.

恭

The Lesson of the
Hidden Life.

W

HAT was the lesson that the Hidden Life

at Nazareth was designed to teach? It was simply this, that the highest and most perfect kind of life does not consist in one occupation more than another, not in severe penances, not in active zeal, not in works of self-denying charity, not in living remote from all in order to spend one's life in contemplation and prayer, but simply in doing the will of God from day to day. This and nought else is the secret of all

sanctity-to do the will of God simply and solely because it is the will of God, from day to day.

Is this an easy lesson? No, it is the most difficult lesson in the whole world. He who has really learnt it in its perfection is already a great saint. It means that self and self-will is dead within him, and that he can say with the Apostle, "I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me." How far from this am I, in whom self lives, and is so strong!

Is this an important lesson? It is the most important lesson in the whole world, as it is the most difficult. Without having learned it we can never attain to solid or lasting happiness. We are always exposed to have our happiness destroyed by something that we think we have reason to regret; something that interferes with our self will, or threatens to interfere with our comfort, or with what we fancy will tend to our welfare or happiness. If only we could learn the secret of doing the will of God simply because it is His will, our life would be a heaven upon earth.-REV. R. CLARKE, S. J.

"E must not deceive ourselves, for he that overcometh not himself in little matters will not be able to do so in great things."- ST. FRANCIS XAVIER.