The poor beggar had not solicited his cure, but his faith was not weak: alone he started for the rill of Siloe, which glides so gently that no ripple could betray it to his ear; he reached it: and entering the pool which had been formed there, washed, and with ravished eyes beheld around him the stately steps and colonnade which Sellum had reared around this precious fountain. Full of joy he returned in search of his benefactor, and as he hurried by, his neighbors cried out: "Is not this he that sat and begged?" "It certainly is," exclaimed some: "No!" said others, "but he looks like him." He however soon dispelled their doubts by assuring them that he was indeed the poor blind beggar. Still more amazed they all with one breath ask: "How were thy eyes opened?" "The man that is called Jesus," said he, "made clay and anointed my eyes, and said to me: Go to the pool of Siloe and wash; and," he added with all Spartan brevity and energy, "I went, I washed, and I see." Then they asked him where Jesus was, and the man declared that he knew not.

The Pharisees had already formed their plots against Jesus, and had resolved to expel from the synagogues any one who acknowledged him to be the Messias.

This determination was known, and the people who beheld in the miracle a violation of the Sabbath and a new charge against our Lord, dragged the man before the Pharisees. Interrogated there, his answer was simple: "He put clay upon my eyes, and I washed, and I see." A dispute then arose among them, some maintaining that Jesus must be a sinner because he violated the Sabbath, others doubting whether a sinner could have such power from God. Turning to the blind man they asked him what he thought. His answer, bold and plain, was: "He is a prophet." Suspecting some collusion they sent for the man's parents: but their son's faith was not theirs; they feared and said: "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but how he now seeth, we know not: ask him: he is of age; let him speak for himself." Calling back the man the Jewish doctors said in a patronizing tone, as though the whole matter had been discovered: "Give glory to God: we know that this man is a sinner." But his spiritual eyes were as open as theirs were blinded. "If he be a sinner, I know not," said the

firm believer; "but this I know, that I was blind and now I see." They again asked him to describe the manner of his cure, but he answered: "I have told you already, and you have heard: why would you hear it again? Will you too become his disciples?" "Be thou his disciple," said they scornfully: 66 we are the disciples of Moses: but as to this man, we know not whence he is." "Why, this is a wonderful thing," was the adroit reply, "you know not whence he is, and he has opened my eyes: now we know that God does not hear sinners to do their will but if a man be a server of God and doeth his will, him God heareth. From the beginning of the world it hath not been heard, that any man hath opened the eyes of one born blind. Unless this man were of God, he could not do any such thing." Stung by this reproach they cast him out: but Jesus who had witnessed his disciple's contest approached him: "Dost thou believe in the Son of God?" "Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?" "Thou hast seen him," said his Divine Redeemer, "and it is he that talketh with thee." "I believe, Lord," exclaimed the fervent disciple, and falling down he adored the Saviour of the world. We know not the name of this disciple, but from the length at which St. John describes the event, he was doubtless one afterwards attached to the beloved apostle.*

Our Lord was then surrounded by the Pharisees, whom he reproached with their obduracy, declaring his mission in parables. Taking up that of a sheepfold, he said:

"I am the door, and the shepherd of the flock can only through me enter to the sheep; nor will the sheep follow any one that does not enter through me." Keeping up the similitude of a sheepfold, he continued in words which seemed to have

been the life-thought of the early Christians: "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep; but the hireling and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep and fleeth, and the wolf catcheth and scattereth the sheep and the hireling fleeth, because he is a hireling; and he hath no care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd and I know mine, and mine know me. As the Father knoweth me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for my sheep. And other sheep I have that are not of this fold," he continued, alluding to the Gentiles, "them also must I bring, and they shall hear my voice and there shall be one fold and one shepherd. Therefore doth the Father love me; because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from me; but I lay it down of myself, and I have power to take it up again."

Well does the Church keep up the symbol and cry:

"Jesu, shepherd of the sheep!
Thou thy flock in safety keep,
Living bread! thy life supply;
Strengthen us or else we die-

Fill us with celestial grace."

After this miracle our Lord returned to Galilee, but did not remain there long, as he wished to attend the Feast of Dedication, which fell that year in December. This feast was instituted to commemorate the restoration and

purification of the temple by Judas Macchabeus, and was always attended by great numbers. As Jesus passed through Galilee and Samaria, ten lepers in the neighborhood of a large city descried him afar, and called out: "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." He was not deaf to their cry: "Go," exclaimed the benign Redeemer, "go show yourselves to the priests." They joyfully obeyed, and were cured as they went. One seeing how great a miracle had been wrought in their favor, returned, and glorifying God, fell on his face before our Lord. "Were there not ten made clean ?" exclaimed Jesus: "Where are the nine? is there no one found to return and give glory to God but this stranger? Arise! go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole."

Reaching Jerusalem he entered the temple, and the Pharisees immediately asked him when the kingdom of God should come? that is, when the Messiah would come and establish his Church. "The kingdom of God," he replied, “ cometh not with observation. Lo, the kingdom of God is within you." He warned them against those who would delude them by pretended Messiahs, and told them that as in the days of Noe and Lot all disregarded God's warnings, even so should it be in the day when the Son of Man should be revealed. But he plainly foretold his rejection by the Jews, his passion and death: "He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation." And he spoke too of his second coming in power and majesty, which should be sudden and unexpected like his first, and like it discovered by the events that follow, even as the death of an animal by the eagles that fly around it. "Wheresoever the body is, there shall the eagles be gathered together."

A Child at Prayer.

BY C. J. CANNON.

A child, whose infant brow

Was wreathed with golden hair,

Low at the twilight hour,

With sweet and rev'rent air,

Knelt at his mother's knee

To lisp his feeble prayer.

And on that rosy face

In innocence so bright!—
Undoubtingly upturned

In the calm evening light,
Did angels stoop to gaze,
Enraptured with the sight.

And as on wings of Faith

His words to Heaven were sped,

And love of his pure heart

A glory round him shed,

Like wholesome dews on flowers,

Fell blessings on his head.

THE INSTRUMENTS OF CHRIST'S PASSION AND DEATH.

THE instruments of our Divine Saviour's Passion have always been held in deep veneration. "If the ark," says St. Jerome, "was held in such high veneration among the Jews, how ought Christians to respect the wood of the cross, whereon our Saviour offered himself a victim for our sins." The Christian at this sacred season naturally turns towards Calvary, and stands in spirit with Mary, St. John and the pious women, beneath the cross of the world's Redeemer, and views with deep emotion that cross, those nails, the crown of thorns-instruments of his Saviour's suffering. The following account, therefore, respecting these sacred instruments by which our Divine Redeemer triumphed over sin, and purchased for us grace and salvation, will prove not only interesting in itself, but serve to renew our faith, our hope, and enkindle in our breasts anew the grateful remembrance of his death.

THE PILLAR AT WHICH OUR LORD WAS SCOURGED.-This was anciently kept at Jerusalem with other relics, on Mount Zion, as mentioned by St. Gregory of Tours, Venerable Bede, St. Jerome and others. It remained in this place till the thirteenth century, when it was brought to Rome by Cardinal John Columna, Apostolic Legate in the East, under Pope Honorius III, A. D. 1213. It was placed in a chapel in the church of St. Praxedes, where it remains, if we mistake not, to the present time. The pillar is of gray marble, about twenty inches long, and one foot in diameter at the bottom and eight inches at the top, where there is a ring to which criminals were tied.

THE CROWN OF THORNS.-The sacred crown of thorns was kept with much veneration at Jerusalem, and afterwards at Constantinople, until the thirteenth century, when Baldwin II gave it to St. Louis, king of France, at a time when the capital of his own empire was no longer considered a place of security against the Saracens. The sacred treasure was carried by holy men by way of Venice into France. St. Louis, with his mother, and many prelates and princes, met it five leagues from Sens. The pious king and his brother Robert, barefooted, and attended by an immense multitude, carried it to the cathedral of that city. It was thence conveyed to Paris with extraordinary solemnity, where the king had built for its reception a chapel, called the Holy Chapel.

What kind of thorns were in the sacred crown, is yet a question among the learned. They were so platted together as entirely to cover the head of our Divine Lord, and not merely as a wreath or fillet to bind the temples. St. Bridget says in the 4th book of her Revelations, that the "thorny crown was pressed down upon his head, reaching to the middle of his forehead."

THE CROSS.-The cross on which our Divine Redeemer suffered, was discovered by St. Helen in the year 326, near the place where our Lord was buried. The pious discoverer of the sacred relic sent a part of it to the Emperor Constantine, then at Constantinople, and another part to Rome, to be placed in a chapel which she had built there, called "The Holy Cross of Jerusalem," where it remains to the present day. The title was sent by St. Helen to the same church in Rome. The inscription in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, is in red letters, and the wood was whitened. This was its appearance as late as the year 1492; but the colors have