and heard and touched Him, blasphemed and crucified Him; whilst we, who have not seen Him, we have the happiness of believing in Him. The sacred words which then fell from the lips of JESUS have been written for us, preserved for us, and it is for us that they are read in the Church. It will be the same through all generations until the end of the world. Our LORD is in Heaven; but His Truth is here, ever present with us."

What great reason have we to bless GOD for His Holy Gospel! We have not been able, it is true, to contemplate CHRIST with our eyes, as He journeyed through the world; and yet, in reading the history of His Acts and of His Words, we are in some sort near Him. If His cotemporaries drew their faith from their intercourse with Him, we also may hold intercourse with Him when we read with faith the pages of His Holy Gospel! They are for us that luminous Star, which heaven gives to the world, to lead it to the Feet of the LORD JEsus.

The precepts of this Blessed Book, said

S. Cyprian, are none other than the instructions of GOD Himself, the immovable foundations of all our hopes, the support of our faith, the nourishment of our heart: and the guide of our pilgrimage. Those who receive them here below, with humble faithfulness, are led by them to the heavenly kingdom. Let us nourish ourselves with this heavenly meat; may the words of the SON of GOD be our joy and our crown of rejoicing! They invite us to meditate upon the Gospel, in it JESUS makes Himself to be the food of our minds; and nothing can be more full of sweetness and love, and holiness and purity, if only our hearts be pure enough to dwell upon it, and to receive it into our souls, and to relish it than this "Glorious Gospel of the Grace of God!"

EPH. iv. 32.-"Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted."

In

WHY are we ever anything else but kind in our words? There are some difficulties, and this we must honestly admit. some respects a clever man is more likely to be kind than a man who is not clever, because his mind is wider, and more capable of looking at things from both sides. But there are other respects in which it is harder for a clever man to be kind, especially in his words. He has a temptation. And it is a temptation to say clever things. And somehow clever things are hardly ever kind things. There is a drop of either acid or bitter in them, and it seems as if that drop had been put in by cleverness. If we were to make an honest resolution never more to say a sharp clever thing, we should advance more rapidly towards heaven. We should try to imitate our LORD's Words in the

Gospel. If we may say it reverently, when we consider that the very form and character of His Words were like proverbs, it is remarkable how little of sharpness there is in them. They are just to the point, and that is all. On the whole, to say clever things of others is hardly ever without sin. There is something in cleverness which is like a sting. Its sharpness, its speed, its delicacy, its wantonness, its pain, its poison-cleverness has all these as well as the sting. A man who says sharp things is hardly ever a really religious man. A man who aims at amusing at the expense of his neighbour, is never a safe man to have for a friend. He is not a man whom any one really loves and respects. He is never innocent, for he is ever running foul of charity.

We may then put down sharp clever speeches as one of the greatest difficulties of saying kind words. Another is that of having control over ourselves, and the inability to repress vexation at certain times, and in certain places. For instance,

we are all likely to meet with persons who appear to have a special power of being able to irritate and vex us. They come at the wrong time. They say the most unsuitable things, and choose the very topics of conversation which we would of all others rather avoid. We may admire and respect them, but for some inexplicable reason we always have an inclination to be irritated by them. This is only an example out of many species of vexation, which it is the office of the spirit of kindness to allay, and to soften. Or again, a man comes to us with an imaginary sorrow, when we are bowed to the earth by a real one: he speaks to us with a loud laugh of health, while we are shrinking with pain. Or he comes to us to pour out his happiness into our hearts which are full of gloom, and his brightness is a reproach, sometimes, as it were, intentional, to our unhappiness. Or we are completely taken up with some responsibility, or harassed by some money affairs, and yet we are called upon to throw ourselves into some petty,