but apply herself with elasticity to gather together the outcasts of Israel. How, too, can we do without some form of orders, or brotherhoods, and that as a recognized form and system of Church administration? The contemplation of our large cities is appalling. Within a stone's throw of scenes of dazzling wealth and sumptuous luxury, the alleys and lanes of the squalid million reticulate the crowded acres of our metropolitan and manufacturing towns. There, in how many miserable homes, the dying lie cursing GoD or looking to the future, as to annihilation? or more affecting still, how many, on whose youthful mind the accents of religious teaching fell long years ago, lie stretched in lonely watching for the last summons, striving to recall words and impressions they had forgotten, and yet the very recollections of which, fleeting and evanescent as they are, fall like melancholy music on the tired ear of life: and in countless cases their cravings are never gratified! The phantoms never become a form. The dissolving view of the past never becomes photographed on the eye of death; and after years of sin and profligacy, infidelity and blasphemy, which intervened between childhood and manhood, the soul goes to GOD to render an account, how appalling! What is to be done with these cases? The parochial clergy cannot meet them. They need seeking and searching out. They need the tender pleadings of an unfailing voice. They need the long night-watch, the unwearied and repeated call by day. Only the members of an order or a fraternity, bound together by the love of JESUS, can do this. They have the heart, and they have the time. Fishers on the waves of night, they cast their net into all waters, and might draw to the heavenly shore many a soul, which will then be infinitely happy for ever, instead of miserable past expression. Oh! glorious, yet painful vision! Oh dream of unparalleled loveliness! Where are the men among us who resemble in spirit those who in other days cared for the outcast? Where are the fraternities of England, the energies parallel with her parochial system? The hands of Hur and Aaron uplifting the arms of Moses in the work of unwearied intercession? We look forth on to our wilderness, and see on all sides the hosts of Amalek, and our heart fails, lest there be not means to supply the remedy. JESUS have mercy on our land! And while the people of this country provide means to meet the case of every temporal and ambitious want, do Thou in Thine infinite compassion teach Thy Church to "devise means" to bring Thy banished home! Nor is this all, our ritual must be made more elastic, more fitted to the people, or they will slip through the meshes of the net we spread to catch them. The lengthened service, the elevation of its style, the monotony of its repetitions, its nice distinctions, make it scarcely able to meet the case of the uneducated, the uninitiated. We have to deal with all classes, and is it likely that the same form which suits the need of the finished Christian, or the highly philosophic mind, should catch the sceptic, the learner, or the dull? Let us retain with some modifications the one, but let us in God's Name add by its side the form which may meet particular wants, and a particular crisis. This we have not done yet; and the midnight shoals of our fishery slip through the meshes of a net which was formed for other spoils, and other water. We toil all night, and catch nothing, or we bring our net to shore at morning-tide, and behold its meshes are torn, its tackle broken. Oh, no, let us build up Jerusalem, and at the same time not neglect to gather in "the outcasts of Israel." I have done; not that the subject would be exhausted in the pleadings or argument of years. The means, which might be applied, ramify in every direction. We need elasticity, co-extensive with our complicated machinery of society. We need the same wisdom to catch souls, which our temporal yearnings have devised to amass wealth. We need a continual genius at work to devise means to meet the extraordinary demand. We want an unceasing forge, ever ready to prepare weapons for our assault on the stronghold of evil. Would to GOD our Jerusalem might be more and more beautiful, her symmetry more complete, her entireness unbroken! May the sound of her Catholic teaching go forth unimpaired; the notes of her Ritual ascend to Heaven continually, giving wings and energy to prayer! May the exercise of her discipline give the impression to the world, that she represents the society of which all others are shadows and types; but at the same time, in her love of order, and her devotion to the conservation of the past, may she not forget to devise means "to gather in the outcasts of her Israel!" LXXIX. THE MEN OF NINEVEH AND THE MEN OF ENGLAND. NATIONAL SINS AND NATIONAL S. LUKE XI. 32. "THE MEN OF NINEVE SHALL RISE UP IN THE JUDGMENT WITH THIS GENERATION, AND SHALL CONDEMN IT: FOR THEY REPENTED AT THE PREACHING OF JONAS; AND, BEHOLD, A GREATER THAN JONAS IS HERE." 1. NATIONAL calamity naturally turns the eye to investigate the causes which lurk in the national history, and the sorrows of Hindostan compel us to inquire into the virtues or vices of English rule. The roll of the book in which is written, "lamentation, and mourning, and woe," whether it records public, or domestic affliction, may be read two ways,—as a sign of God's mercy, or of His justice. The two views become nearly one at last; and if God sees fit |