care he has taken to realize his promises, and to save the mysterious bark against winds and rocks down to our day; and as to what regards the future, let us still leave to Omnipotence the care of perpetuating his work. May he not say to us, as formerly to Job: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth, when I set limits to the sea, when I unfolded the heavens and the morning stars praised me together, when, in short, in the immensity of space, these torrents of light, sprung from nothing, spread out at the sound of my voice.

The Catholic religion has no need to envelop itself in darkness to preserve the legitimate ascendency it derives from its heavenly origin; it has never eluded discussion, but always invited it, by all means in its power. Long before printing was invented innumerable volumes had been written on all the points of religion and the truths upon which it rests; but it must be admitted that without this discovery the writings of the ancients could never have found the astonishing publicity they now enjoy; it would have been equally impossible to multiply, as has been done in these latter times, the works of ecclesiastical history, of controversy, of theology, of criticism, of philosophy, of natural history, and of the exact sciences, which form this marvelous assemblage of learning and genius, the works of so many admirable writers, from which radiates a light so strong and pure that every reasonable man must see that the Catholic religion alone can be true.

To be continued.

"Sursum Corda."

Bending o'er a marble stone,

These the words that caught my eye;
Telling of a spirit flown,

To a home beyond the sky.

Replete with hope and holy love,
Seemed these sacred words to me:
Bidding the mourners look above
For sorrow's balm and sympathy.

A sculptured rose, but scarce full blown,
Bespoke the youth and loveliness
Of her who slept beneath that stone,
The quiet sleep of holiness.

A fragile bud was pictured there,

Just severed from the parent flower;

It seemed too delicately fair

To bloom beyond the Heavenly bower!

A marble cross told of the trust,

With which the Christian mourners gave
Their loved one to the silent dust,
Their idol to the lonely grave.

But neither bud, nor cross, nor flower,
Were half so full of faith and love,
As those few words of magic power,
Which bade the mourners look above.
"SURSUM CORDA," these the words
I'd have engraven o'er my head,
When sweetly sing the summer birds
A requiem for the Christian dead.

SCENES IN THE LIFE OF OUR LORD.

Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem.-His Parables.-He refutes the Scribes and the Sadducees.-Foretells the Destruction of Jerusalem.-The Last Supper. -The Institution of the Blessed Sacrament.

THE Pasch was now beginning, and our Lord sent two of his disciples to procure an ass and her foal, on which, according to prophecy, he was to enter the holy city as king: as such, save the Pharisees, all hailed him the air resounded with their cries: "Hosanna to the Son of David!" "Blessed be the kingdom of our father David that cometh!" "Blessed be the king that cometh in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory on high!" "Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel!" Thus recognized as king he

entered the temple amid the joyous crowd, all waving aloft their branches of palm, and showed his power by driving out the trafficers in the temple, declaring it his house, thus proclaiming himself both God and king. To confirm his words he wrought miracles, curing the lame and blind. The priests and Pharisees however murmured still, but Jesus told them that if the people remained silent the very stones would cry out.*

"But if ye should hold your peace,

Deem not that the song would cease

Angels round His glory-throne,

Stars, His guiding hand that own,

Flowers that grow beneath our feet,

Stones in earth's dark womb that rest
High and low in choir shall meet,
Ere His name shall be unblest."

* John xii, 13. Matthew xxi, 15. Mark xi, 1-11.

† Keble.

The Eternal Father too would proclaim the royalty and divinity of his Son ; to whom in the Psalms he had said: "I will give thee the Gentiles as an inheritance." Gentiles sought him, but Jesus who had wept over the fall of Jerusalem before he entered it in triumph, now was troubled in soul at the sight of his coming passion, ever distinctly but now vividly present to his mind, and pressing down upon him. "My soul is troubled," he cried, "but shall I say, Father! save me from this hour! no: for this I came into the world. Father glorify thy name!" At these words a voice as of thunder resounded: "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." The crowd wondered in amazement at this new prodigy, but the hearts of the priests and Pharisees were deaf to this as to every other proof." We have Moses and the Prophets," they cried, disowning Christ, as many with the same cry disown his Church.*

Towards evening he retired again to Bethania, and on the next inorning returning, cursed the barren fig-tree, to show God's rejection of the now barren synagogue. The next day in the temple the chief priests gathered around him to demand his authority for his actions, but he reduced them to silence by asking whether John's baptism was of God. He then continued his instructions, more clearly revealing his own death and the destruction of their city, a just punishment of the crime, by which they sought to avert it. This he did plainly in the parable of the tenants who rose against the messengers of their lord, and even cast

The Pharisees showing the Coin of the Tribule.

the son of their lord out of the vineyard and slew him; on which the lord came with power and destroyed them all. Full well they knew that they were meant, those haughty Scribes and Pharisees, and crying, "God forbid," they sought to seize, but durst not. Then they bethought them of entrapping him into what might be construed into treason.† Spies from their body with modest face and Luke xx, 9-19.

mien came and asked Jesus: " Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Cæsar or no?" for they hoped to make him unpopular if he affirmed, and a seditious man if he denied it but he readily baffled their wiles. "Shew me a coin," he cried, and when they handed him one, he looked at it and asked, "Whose image and superscription is this?" "Cæsar's," they answered. "Render then," exclaimed our Lord," render therefore unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's."*

The Sadducees too, the disbelievers in the resurrection of the dead, and indeed in the immortality of the soul, forgetting their hatred of the Pharisees, assailed Jesus, but by a single text he shewed them that God considered "the dead as still existing," and reducing them to silence, won the applause even of the Scribes.

While declaiming against the vanity of the Scribes, he saw a poor widow cast a mite, a small coin, into the temple treasury. It was an act unnoticed by men,

but our Lord who knoweth all, turned to his disciples and said: "Amen, I say to you, this poor widow hath cast in more than all they who have cast in to the treasury for they all did cast in of their abundance, but she of her want cast in all she had, even her whole living."+ In the evening Jesus left the temple, and as his disciples expressed their admiration of its beauties and the wealth lavished upon

* Matthew xxii, 17. Luke xx, 20.

† Mark xii, 42.

it, our divine Saviour again announced its destruction, and as they proceeded to Mount Olivet, predicted clearly the terrors of the siege of Jerusalem, a figure of the end of the world. Again and again he inculcated to them by parables the necessity of wa ching and prayer.

The priests had now resolved to put him to death, and Judas, for a paltry bribe, had agreed to tray his Lord and God into the hands of his enemies. Conscious that on that very evening his passion would begin, Jesus sent Peter and John to prepare a room where he might with his disciples celebrate the Pasch. When evening drew nigh, he himself, with the ten, proceeded to the spot soon to become by his institution the first temple of the new law, the shrine of his worship.

Reclining with his twelve apostles, he eat the Paschal Lamb with all the ceremonies prescribed by the law, thus closing that ordinance instituted by Moses at his command. For he was the true Lamb of God, of which men had hitherto partaken only in figure, but were now to partake in reality.

"On this table of the King,

Our new Paschal offering,
Brings to end the olden rite;
Here for empty shadows fled
Is reality instead,

Here instead of darkness, Light."

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VOL. IV.-No. 4.