are called upon, first of all, to preserve a human life. Without Christian care the orphan must either starve, or drag out a miserable existence, which latter is rather a penalty than a boon. What can be more noble than to preserve a human life-that heavenly spark of the gift of life which came originally from the breath of God, and which links together in wonderful harmony the body and the soul of man? It is one of the noblest of human sciences, that which devotes itself to save and to prolong life when attacked by disease, and men who devote to it their young years, and waste the midnight oil, and expose themselves to fatigues and plagues to advance it, are true martyrs of humanity, and deserve to be reckoned among the noblest of men. But surely it is not less glorious to anticipate and prevent the inroads of disease and death than to combat them directly when they have already delivered their assault?

You are called upon to do the very work which at the Last Day shall win for you a favourable sentence. By contributing to the support of the orphan you feed the hungry, you give drink to the thirsty, you clothe the naked, all together: your one deed of charity is like a diamond which, though solitary, yet sparkles with various light, and in itself embraces all. You have brought back home and happiness, you have given education, you have rescued from vice; and amen I say to you, what you have done for the least of these orphans, you have done for Christ.

You are called to do the very work that brought Christ down from heaven to earth. He came that men should have life, and should have it more abundantly; and this is eternal life, that men should know the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom He sent. Now, this is the very work you are called upon to perform on behalf of the orphans, by enabling them to receive a Christian education. You are to teach them the God who made them, the Saviour who died for them, the Holy Ghost who sanctifies them; you are to enlighten their ignorance by instruction, to correct their corrupt will by the sweet influences of grace. This was the fire Christ came on earth to scatter among men, and He has no desire more vivid than that it should be everywhere enkindled. How many martyrs and missioners have spent their lives in labouring to effect this, and yet you can effect it at a slight sacrifice, indeed. The daughters of St. Francis are there to take on themselves all that is really severe in the work: they will instruct, they will devote their lives, their strength to this work; they only ask your help to enable them to do so, and they will share with you their

reward.

Whether, then, you consider, beloved brethren, the claims of Him who has given you the charge I have set before you, or

the nature of the object confided to your care, or the character of the work you are called upon to perform, you cannot refuse your generous co-operation; but should any further motive be wanting, think of the reward you will receive. St. Paul tells us that the pagan philosophers were inexcusable, because, whereas every creature spoke to them of God, they did not glorify Him as they ought. The heavens told them of his glory: each day that died published it to the day that rose; and the silence of the night was eloquent with the theme. They were inexcusable because of the cloud of witnesses whom God had sent to speak to them of Himself. And so shall you be without excuse, beloved brethren, if you refuse to be generous in your charity, for God has raised up a similar cloud of every kind of witnesses to tell you of the rewards of almsgiving. Ages before Christianity, and even among those outside the pale of the Jewish religion, from the land of Uris, Job raises his plaintive voice to tell you how blessings followed him because he had delivered the fatherless. If from the sad spectacle of the sufferings of Job you turn to the glories of the people of God, and, like the Queen of Sheba, visit the royal palace of Israel, in its golden courts you will hear the voice of the King Prophet declaring how blessed is the man who taketh thought for the needy and the poor, and how in the evil day God will deliver him. Follow the Jewish people to captivity, and though their harps hang silent on the willows, and their songs are hushed in the strange land, yet not hushed is the voice of the good Tobias, who tells you that alms deliver from all sin and from death, and will not suffer the soul to go into darkness. Even the angels of God join their voices in praise of charity with the voices of earth; and Raphael, one of the seven who stand before God, announces that alms deliver from death, and maketh to find mercy and life everlasting. Do you desire more? To the voices of sage and saint, and prophet and angel, the Eternal Wisdom, the Word made Flesh, unites his majestic utterance, and the voice that made the world proclaims to you that what remaineth give as alms, and behold all things are clean unto you!

Give charity, then, this morning, copiously and generously, to the orphans of St. Clare; take these children of Christ, bring them up for Him, and He, the faithful and true, will give you your reward.

FOR AN ORPHANAGE.

And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards He was hungry."-MAtt. iv. 2.

"Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God."-MATT. iv. 4.

THE Cunning which ever prompts the Evil One to seize on any opportunity likely to further man's spiritual ruin, is nowhere more plainly displayed than in the Gospel history I have just read. This cunning taught him to detect in our Lord's hunger an occasion which would point out and strengthen the temptation he was about to urge; for he knew well that among frail men, such as he believed our Lord to be, the want of the necessaries of life is a sower of rebellious thoughts against the blessed majesty of God's providence. And, indeed, beloved brethren, it is difficult, at first sight, to justify that providence to the eye of the starving and naked wretch. If you tell him of our Heavenly Father, who clothes the lily in array fair beyond the king's glory; if you speak to him of the Being who encompasses with tender care the commonest of his beings, how will he hear you as long as he feels that the clothing bestowed on the grass of the field, and the tenderness lavished upon the birds of the air, are denied to him, though he be the so-called lord of that earth of which these creatures are but the rude furnishing? If you tell him of the Almighty hand which love causes evermore to open, and which, when it opens, gives food in fitting season to every creature waiting upon it-nay, even if you tell him that the very same Almighty hand that feeds all creatures has been nailed to the cross for him, through love-what impression will you make on his heart, hardened by the thought that all this love has passed him by, pitying all but him, unpitying for him alone, without warming or cherishing him in its passage? This is a great difficulty, indeed, to face, my brethren; but there is even a still more complicated form of it. The Psalmist tells us (Ps. cxlvi. 9) that it is God who giveth food to the young ravens that call upon Him; but by what means does He feed them? He Himself tells us in Job (xxviii. 41) that it is by providing food for their mother when her young ones cry to God, wandering about because they have no meat. That is to say, my brethren, it is the mother that feeds the brood, and yet even so it is God who feeds them, for it is God who has placed

in her heart the unerring, inscrutable instinct of love that urges her to seek and find and bring food to her little ones. And as it is with the young of the raven, so is it with the children of men: they, too, call to God's providence for food, and God provideth it for them by means of their parents, whose love and labour are the means He has established to feed his little ones. And yet, my brethren, we see that God frequently takes away from over these little ones the parents who gave them birth-that is to say, God's providence deliberately denies to the orphan those very means of existence which that same providence had established as the instruments of his bounty towards them. God forbid, my brethren, that the dark thought should enter your mind that by sending death to the parents God wishes that the orphans should all perish off the earth! Reason recoils from believing such cruelty of the God who spareth all because He loveth souls our heart refuses to accept it, and makes room instead for the words of the Psalmist, "Patris orphanorum et judicis veduarum" (Ps. lxvii. 6). God Himself proclaims it to be false by declaring Himself in an especial manner the Father of the orphan. On the contrary, my brethren, it would appear as if the removal of the parents did but draw the orphan closer to the heart of God, as if the chain that binds God to man is shortened by the dropping out of some of its links. In the genealogy of our Saviour, Adam only is called the son of God, the other generations each being attributed to their respective progenitors; and so in the case of the orphan, God wishes him to be called his son: "I am the Father of the orphan." It would be blasphemy, then, my brethren, to think that God ceases to wish to preserve those whom He has made orphans; but this truth, so plain and so certain, does but increase our difficulty. If God's providence has charged itself with the sustenance of its creatures; if it habitually fulfils this charge by certain ordinary means adapted to the end; if it deliberately remove these means in the case of orphans and others, without ceasing to wish to attain the end proposed, what are we to say? How does it happen that while He deliberately wishes the poor orphan to live, He with equal deliberation removes the means by which only this wish can be accomplished? You have heard the only answer that can be given, and you have heard it from the divine lips of Jesus Christ Himself. It is not by bread alone that man lives, that is, it is not only by ordinary means that God can attain his end, but by whatever means He pleases. All means are alike to Him.

All the means in God's hands may be roughly reduced to two classes the supernatural and the natural. God had recourse

to supernatural means when, having led out the Israelites into the desert, away from the flesh-pots of Egypt and the Egyptian plains of waving corn, He fed them for forty years with manna sent down from heaven; and it was with respect to this miraculous interposition of Providence that the words quoted by our Lord were originally used. I know, my brethren, that God could have recourse to similar means to feed his orphans; that He could send the ravens to bring them bread, as He did to Eliseus the Prophet; that He could rain manna upon them from heaven, or bid the corn spring up at the touch of orphan feet, or the earth supply them with rich metals from its bosom. I know He could do all this, but I know that He has been pleased not to do it. To expect these miraculous interpositions of God on behalf of his little ones is to expect that what is only an exception should become a rule; nay, more, it is to say what the Evil One said: "Let these stones become bread." God, then, does not wish to realise his plan, to fulfil his wish, by supernatural means: natural means He has removed. How, then, are God's orphans to be fed? They must be supported either by their own toil, or by the help of those to whom God has given in greater or less abundance the riches of this world. To say that they are to support themselves is a mockery; therefore, very beloved brethren, we are inevitably brought to the conclusion that either God has pledged Himself to do what is impossible and is false to his pledges, or that it is his clear and positive will that you are to be the instruments of his providence with regard to these little ones whom He loves. As truly, then, as that God does not undertake impossibilities, or break his pledges, so truly you are called upon by Him to be fellowworkers with Him on behalf of the orphans. Do not fret, my brethren, or impatiently regard the burden of this duty; for the hand that lays it upon you is the same which gives you your worldly substance; nay, it is one of your titles to what you possess. Before you close your heart against the call God makes on you on behalf of his orphans, let us consider that we have got all things from the bounty of God. He could ask you for your time, your life, your health, &c. will you refuse Him the little He does ask in reality? It is said that when God crowns our good works He does but crown the merits He Himself has given us; and, in like manner, we may say that when He imposes a duty on us it is but a way of conferring some fresh favour upon us. When He imposes on you the duty of helping Him to feed the orphan, He is but conferring a boon upon you. If we examine in Sacred Scripture the dealings of God with man, we shall see that He has ever followed this rule: whenever He avails Himself of the