sin, and lost the light of God's grace, they began to kindle fires to consume the victims they had slain. This was done to draw down the fire of His love upon their guilty souls.

From the earliest times smoke from these fires rose up from altars of stone, in honour of God and in thanksgiving, because in His wrath He had remembered mercy. As time went on a Greater Sacrifice approached, longed for by God and man. My little children, you know what that was. The Holy Cross is the wood; the victim, God made man; and the fire is the love of His Sacred Heart. Faith and hope in this stupendous sacrifice were kindled in the Garden of Eden immediately after the Fall.

Holy patriarchs and prophets saw the smoke of that sacrifice through the mist of ages: the light from it was so brilliant that it almost blinded them with joy before it had been kindled they were in the burning bush of loving anticipation, and they speak of that tremendous sacrifice as if it had been already

accomplished; they seem to be looking back. at, rather than forward to it. The prophet Isaias cries out, "The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold; in the day when the Lord shall bind up the wound of His people, and shall heal the stroke of their wound." "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. For a child is born to us." The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is as the Sanctuary Lamp, through whose pure light the Orient from on high hath visited us. It shone through the drooping foliage of Paradise, when God said to the serpent,-"I will put enmities between thee and THE WOMAN . . . She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." Nothing defiled can touch our thrice holy God: therefore, He prepared an undefiled Tabernacle wherein to dwell, and shine on the darkness of this world, namely, the Body of His Virgin Mother. The Second Person of the ever- blessed

Trinity deigned to become Man in order to die for us, and the Immaculate Conception of His Mother reflects His uncreated Beauty and Divinity. The Sacrifice on Calvary was so tremendous that the smoke of it still goes up daily from the altars of the Christian Church, and will do so till the end of time; in the words of the Catechism, "The MASS is the unbloody sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ." The Lamb standing as it were slain. The prophet Malachi saw the glory of it, for he says, "The sacrifice of Juda and Jerusalem shall please the Lord as in the days of old." "From the rising of the sun even to the going down, my Name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, there is offered to my Name a clean oblation.”

I have not space here to tell you all the types and figures of our Blessed Lord or of His Holy Church which are found in the Old Testament; my wish is to point at the Lamp by whose light you may read them.

In the Book of Exodus it is written, the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “I have heard the murmuring of the children of Israel; say to them, In the morning you shall have your fill of bread, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God. . . . And when the children of Israel saw it, they said what is this? for And Moses said

one to another, Manhu, . . .

they knew not what it was. to them, this is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat. Fill a gomer of it, and let it be kept unto generations to come hereafter, that they may know the bread wherewith I fed you . . when you were brought out of the land of Egypt."

It is within the tabernacle of the Holy Catholic Church that the Heaven-sent bread is stored for the strength and support of our souls and bodies.

God made man is the Christian's Manhu, and before Him the Sanctuary Lamp continually burns.

I write these words to you, dear children,

under the beautiful ruins of the church and monastery of "The Blessed Mary and St. Oswin," on the rugged cliffs of Northumberland. Kings, Queens, Saints of every class in life have knelt before its altar for centuries, to contemplate and adore the Christian's Manhu, the Lord our God. Storm-tossed mariners have hailed the twinkle of its altar lamp through the foaming spray, and have called upon their Sacramental Lord to command the waters, and to say, "Peace, be still." There are many such beautiful monasteries and convents in England now ruined and rifled, where holy men and women gave their lives to God, and spent their time in praise, in prayer, and in works of charity to their neighbours, remembering the words of the Divine Master whom they served, "Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me."

Besides the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, they attained great perfection in the fine arts-architecture, painting, music,