TIME VANQUISHED BY JESUS CHRIST.--Ibid.

The fourth power of time is chance, that is to say certain conjunctures which do not blend with anything that genius is able to combine and foresee, and which suddenly overthrow the most ably concerted designs. History is full of these. Human prudence makes shipwreck upon shoals imperceptible to the keenest eye. It is the grain of sand of which Pascal speaks, which one morning threw Cromwell into disorder, and destroyed plans destined to change the face of Europe.

2. You sometimes wonder, perhaps, at a certain equilibrium visible in the world, and which keeps the strong from destroying the weak at will. Why have those great empires not yet crushed the small neighboring states? It is because those great empires have Cromwell's grain of sand against them. At the very moment when their combinations are ready to succeed. and bring about the destruction of all rights upon earth, the obscure son of some peasant, in the corner of a hut, sharpens his knife on a broken millstone; at the noise of war he dons his cap, slips his knife into his girdle, and goes out to see something of what is passing between Providence and the kings of the earth. The smoke of powder opens his eyes; the sight of blood elates him; God makes him the instrument of a brilliant action; behold him a great captain; empires recede a step before him; that knife, that peasant, is chance.

3. Judge now how much of this Jesus Christ has had to encounter in the course of a reign of eighteer

hundred years. Consult simply the history of the pa pacy, and see what a slender thread has held the destinies of that throne, always surrounded by enemies, yet always enduring. It has constantly had to contend against the most skilful combinations; but what is still more terrible is that conspiracy of chance, that enemy which might at any time have destroyed it, and which, strange to say, has always respected it.

4. The fifth power of time is war. No earthly power can avoid combat; it necessarily has enemies, not only on account of its faults and abuses, but by the simple fact of its existence. To exist is to combat, because to exist is to take from the common seat of life a part of the substance destined for all; and if this be true of the most feeble being, how much more so must it be of an assemblage of beings raised to the state of power! Therefore Jesus Christ declared " that he came not to send peace, but war,"* a terrible war, and upon a scale so vast as to astound our imagination. For it is the war of the spirit against the flesh and of the flesh against the spirit, that is to say, of the two elements which constitute man, neither of which can ever completely vanquish the other. When the body is victori ous the soul struggles against it, and when the soul is the stronger the body watches for the moment when its yoke may be broken. But this internal struggle does not cease here, it necessarily produces a war as general as it is deeply seated. Souls unite with souls, and bodies with bodies; it is the union of bcdies

* St. Matt. x. 34.

against the union of souls which forms the great war of mankind. Jesus Christ at the head of one army, and Satan at the head of the other; the army of the passions, pride, sensuality, hatred, on one side; the army of the spirit, humility, chastity, obedience, mortification, charity, on the other. All these are in action in the formidable regions of the finite and the infinite, in the depths of God, of the soul, and of the senses, amidst a thousand secondary causes which add to the gloom and the chances of the struggle; and if Jesus Christ be God, he must in the end be victorious, his form remaining unchangeable, although continually insulted, upon the venerable summit of time and things.

5. Has it been so, gentlemen? Can we testify of Jesus Christ that he has been more powerful than novelty, than experience, than corruption, than chance, than war, than all these causes banded together against him during a course of eighteen centuries? Can we do this?

6. Yes, gentlemen, I can do this; I can even show you three degrees in this triumph of Jesus Christ over time. For, in the first place, he lives, his work is before you; although it has undergone more or less of attack in that long pilgrimage under the rebel hand of time, it is nevertheless still before you. It remains surrounded by sufficient glory to attract all eyes, and to be still the object of veneration to which there is no rival, as nothing is comparable to the hatred of the enemies who have not accepted in its temporal duration the proof of its origin in the very bosom of eternity. But this is not all. Not only is Jesus Christ living in

his Church and his Church in him, but, since the Christian era, no religious establishment has been founded in the world, of which Jesus Christ has not been the basis and the bond of union.

XILE OF ERIN.—Campbell.

There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill:
For his country he sigh'd, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill:
But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion,
For it rose o'er his own native isle of the ocean,
Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion,
He sang the bold anthem of Erin go bragh.

Sad is my fate! said the heart-broken stranger:
The wild deer and wolf to covert can flee,
But I have no refuge from famine and danger,
A home and a country remain not to me.
Never again, in the green sunny bowers,

Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet

hours,

Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers,
And strike to the numbers of Erin go bragh!

Erin, my country! though sad and forsaken,
In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore;
But, alas! in a far foreign land I awaken,

A sigh for the friends who can meet me no more!

Oh cruel fate! wilt thou never replace me

In a mansion of peace-where no perils can chase me
Never again shall my brothers embrace me?
They died to defend me, or live to deplore!

Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wild wood?
Sisters and sire! did ye weep for its fall?
Where is the mother that look'd on my childhood?
And where is the bosom friend, dearer than all ?
Oh! my sad heart! long abandon'd by pleasure,
Why did it dote on a fast-fading treasure?
Tears, like the rain-drop, may fall without measure,
But rapture and beauty they cannot recall.

Yet all its sad recollections suppressing,

One dying wish my lone bosom can draw: Erin! an exile bequeaths thee his blessing! Land of my forefathers! Erin go bragh! Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion, Green be thy fields,--sweetest isle of the ocean! And thy harp-striking bards sing aloud with devo tion,

Erin mavournin-Erin go bragh! *

WHAT MAKES A HERO?-Henry Taylor.
What makes a hero?--not success, not fame,
Inebriate merchants, and the loud acclaim
Of glutted Avarice,-caps tossed up in air,
Or pen of journalist with flourish fair;

*Ireland, my darling, Ireland for ever.