on the detail of sad obscenities; or you may read Horace for the sake of exciting or stimulating passion through the instrumentality of a lascivious ode. But this is your own fault. You may use the Bible itself so if you will.

And then, too, it would be a high thought,

though perhaps difficult for many of you to

put into practice, if you could get into the habit of applying the various parts of study to their higher and nobler aims. For instance, if the study of language could be invested with the deeper import of words; if you could get yourself to look upon them as expressive of ideas, and that consequently, if they are confused, the ideas are confused; it would be well. Remember that words have a reflex action on the mind that produces them, and that, if we suffer our expressions to become hazy and indefinite, our thoughts will soon become enveloped in the same mist. Our Blessed SAVIOUR is called "the Word of God," inasmuch as He entirely expressed in His Human Nature and conduct the complete Will of God. His Incarnation has consecrated all words for ever, from the first LORD's Prayer of the infant to the everlasting hymn of praise which will sound throughout heaven.

All this may to a certain degree appear transcendental, and have a slight shade of unreality in it; nevertheless, it is as well to get the mind habituated to this style of thought.

If

you even contemplate the possibility of doing it, you will find yourself going in the groove the more easily and rapidly.

c. But S. Stephen in a singular manner not only devoted, but offered up his intellect to GOD. Possessed of a high power, which might have exercised its influence throughout the career of a long life in this world, he threw his whole energy into that power, which he knew would bring down death upon himself, and thereby cut short all his chance of exercising it in this world.

You, too, must learn the sacrifice of your higher powers to GOD, if need be. There may be many ways short of actual death which may enable you to do this: the devotion of powers for others rather than self; the being obliged to devote them in a line less attractive than the one you would choose; the being willing to give up some intellectual pursuit which immediately pleases, for one of a severer and still higher nature; the exercise of powers for the support of a parent, of a child, of a younger

brother, of the aged, or the orphan; all these may be modes in which many of you in future life may be called upon to devote your intelligent powers by sacrifice to GOD, as S. Stephen yielded up his beneath the instrument of an early martyrdom.

d. But the proto-martyr showed that he possessed a well-stored mind, and that he was able to bring its treasures to bear upon the subjectmatter of his calling. You too should aim at storing your mind with the treasures of history and knowledge; and especially, as he did, with the knowledge of God's Word and with the events of His Church.

It is very lamentable that young men of the highest walks of English life, should be ignorant of the Bible history. Blunders of the grossest nature, which should excite a blush rather than a smile, have become the standing jokes of the examinations at our Universities. And yet, when we consider our immortal interests, the knowledge of GOD's treatment of human character and national circumstance should be amongst the first objects of our lives. The high masculine faith of Abraham; the patient and meditative tone of Isaac; the infirm and overweening affections of Jacob; the

simple and childlike magnificence of Joseph; the life-throes of Moses in Egypt and the wilderness; the military renown kept in abeyance to religious awe in Joshua; the versatile life of David; the Songs and Proverbs, the buildings "exceeding magnifical," and the moral infirmities, of Solomon: all these stored up now by your attention should be pictorially and graphically present to your memory in the treasurehouse of after years. Surely, it is a shame for any Christian boy to know the tales of Jason and Medæa, the woes of the Atreidæ, or the calamities of Edipus, better than the stories of Jezebel, the punishment of the sons of Saul, or the doom of the incestuous Amnon! Surely it is a shame for any Christian youth to know the Odes of Horace better than the Psalms of David! or to be better versed in the Phædo of Plato than in that Gospel which has brought "life and immortality to light!"

Nor is it only the history and facts of Scripture, which, after the example of S. Stephen, you should commit to memory, but also of the history of the Church of CHRIST, that society immediately instituted by Himself, in which we have so special a citizenship, whose destinies are eternal, whose course through the

world has been so irresistible, and whose continuous links have been unbroken. Why should you know more of the Samnite and Peloponnesian war than of the struggle of the Church against Arius and Nestorius? Why should you feel a deeper interest in Athenian Archons or in Roman tribunes than in the ministers of CHRIST's everlasting Catholic Church? S. Stephen brought a magnificent record to bear, and you should bear the same. It may be you will have to do it in the conversation with the sceptic; it may be in the moment of personal doubt, when you would refer to the precedent of the past; it may be when you would instruct another; it may be when you would gain strength or consolation at the hour of death. mind when, you will be sure to find the moment when that knowledge will be applicable.

Never

e. But there is another point in S. Stephen with which we are struck,-his personal courage. He was one who combined great physical with high moral powers, and who shows us that the two are not only compatible, but that the one adorns the other. His bold rebuke of the obstinacy and sinfulness of his people brought down upon him ejection and death, but he did not for a moment hesitate; his choice was