which have been set in earthly diadems, and bid their radiance gleam from a heavenly crown. Scripture, in fact, does not condemn these particular qualities, but constantly warns us against their abuse. It would bid us fear using them for their own sake, and direct us to a further aim in their exercise.

Every holy warrior of Scripture especially laboured for the furtherance of God's kingdom and of right. Abraham sought to rescue the captive unjustly taken; David, to crush the heathen, and extend the limits of the Church of GOD. None retained their arms for their own sake, but all laid them down when their work was ended, and their design accomplished.

4. And now to turn these types and models to the practical conduct of life. I need hardly remind you, (before I bring home the direct practical rule to be borrowed from these reflections,) of the long array of those who from time to time, through the various ages of mankind, have imitated these high models, and adorned Christianity by the greatness of their personal courage. Such were hosts of the martyrs of early ages: the boy who bit out his tongue rather than yield to the fas

cination of lust; and the soldier of our own country who showed an even nobler gallantry before the executioner than he had in the battle-field, who won for his high title that of the British proto-martyr, and for his mausoleum one of our noblest abbeys. There, too, is the first martyr of the Catholic Church, the weapons of whose warfare were those of eloquence and learning; nevertheless they won him as high a title as the sword or the shield of the soldier.

The thundering legion of a Roman Emperor numbered in its ranks the baptized of the army; and Ambrose, the veteran soldier, laid aside the helmet for the mitre of Milan and the crown of suffering. The Spanish soldier, revered on all sides for his personal valour, leaving the ranks of the army of Spain, founded an order in the Church. And what fills the mind with more swelling emotion than the tale of the youth who, resigning a crown for the cloister, rendered the name of Aloysius so celebrated among men? Louis, the descendant of Philip Augustus of France, and that other Louis, justly revered and embalmed in the historic recollections of Hungary, have redeemed that regal name from the ignominy to which too

many of its possessors have consigned it. And not to be forgotten in that band of heroes are many of those who, with a pure love for the Church, and a sincere devotion to the religious idea of loyalty, fought and fell around the unfortunate Charles Stuart. Nor has the band lessened as it has approached our own day, when we recollect Malesherbes who died for his king, and Gardiner who perished at Culloden.

The reflections caused by such a line, as they pass in succession before us, are in themselves almost sufficient practical suggestions to stir us up to the practical duties connected with the subject before us; but I will reduce them to more definite shape and outline.

a. And, first, the selection of David was necessitated by the rejection of Saul; and yet Saul possessed all that was needful to form a hero of this world. This at once strikes a line between two classes of heroes, and shows that one, having been weighed in the balance, is found wanting. With how many schoolboys is this true! Among their companions they pride themselves on the qualities of generosity and independence, and yet they may for all that be amongst the vilest of

GOD's creation-to be rejected at last, and to be supplanted, not by those who fail in the traits which we admire; but who, adorned with them, will inherit the fame that they have lost.

Many youths possess power, intelligence, generosity, and courage. These are highly esteemed. We have often to feel that many of those who have served GoD have too much underrated these virtues, and that the irreligious have found more favour with them than those who have been religious. We may have occasionally yielded ourselves to the strong desire of the moment. Others form an over-estimate of those powers and gifts, and that from an impression that those who exercise them are excluded from the possibility of a religious life.

The boy who, possessed of natural courage, fights for the mere purpose of injuring another, or maintaining a fraud; the youth who, however high in birth or station, however soaring in family pride, destroys the property of his poorer neighbour, upon the pretence of supporting caste; he who deals with the acts of Christianity as if they were the unreality of a dream with the knee unbent in prayer and the

lip unmoved to the Creed; or those who, in high position in the school, ever lend their influence to discourage earnestness, never to protect self-denial; these will inevitably find one day that, like Saul, they will be deposed from their station, and another, gifted with the same powers though directed to a nobler aim, chosen in their stead. It may be asked how. In the very school where they have exercised their power wrongly, they may stand degraded. They may lose by some stroke of retributive providence the hard-wrought aim in the prize or examination, and, sinking suddenly in the scale of intellectual eminence, be left with no nobler excellence than the unjust exercise of mere brute force; or having won their pathway to school-captaincy by the exercise of degrading principles, may only go to the University, or to the public office, to be despised, trampled on, and passed by. In such ways GOD may by the exercise of His Providence actually depose those who have misused their influence and superiority; and their place will be taken in the strife of after life by those who, having been crushed by them, may yet not be deficient in any one of the powers of which they boasted.