of nature, to plunge into forests-those forests-the cradle of religion, whose shades and solitudes are filled. with the recollection of prodigies, where the ravens and the doves nourished the prophets and fathers of the Church. If we visit a modern monument, whose origin or destination is known, it excites no attention; but, if we meet on a desert isle, in the midst of the ocean, with a mutilated statue pointing to the West, with its pedestal covered with hieroglyphics, and worn by the winds, what a subject of meditation is presented to the traveller! Everything is concealed, everything is hidden, in the universe. Man himself is the greatest mystery of the whole. Whence comes the spark which we call existence, and in what obscurity is it to be extinguished? The Eternal has placed our birth, and our death, under the form of two vailed phantoms, at the two extremities of our career; the one produces the inconceivable gift of life, which the other is ever ready to devour. It is not surprising, then, considering the passion of the human mind for the mysterious, that the religions of every country should have had their impenetrable secrets. God forbid that I should ever compare the mysteries of the true faith, or the unfathomable depths of the Sovereign in the heavens above, to the changing obscurities of those gods which are the work of human hands. All that I observe is, that there is no religion without mysteries, and that it is they, with the sacrifice, which everywhere constitute the essence of the worship. COMPOSITION. Give the last paragraph in your own words. Write the following sentences in two ways: (a) Infancy is only happy because it as yet knows nothing; age is miserable, because it has nothing more to learn. (b) Happily for old age, when the mysteries of life are ending, those of immortality commence. (c) A modern monument excites no attention; but a mutilated statue, with its pedestal covered with hieroglyphics, is a subject of meditation to the traveller. (d) The most angelic virtues are those which love to withdraw themselves from public gaze, as if fearful to betray their celestial origin. THE leave the world, to depart from his disciples. He is about to utter his last words: to frame his greatest of testaments. Mark it well. It is brief enough: " Go, teach all nations!" Go; do not wait for mankind, but march at its head; teach, not like philosophers who discuss and demonstrate, but with authority, which takes its own ground and asserts itself; speak, not to one nation, not to one country, not to one century, but to the four winds of heaven and to the future, even to the most distant extremities of space and time; and, as rapidly as the energy or the good fortune of man discovers new lands, go you, as rapid as his energy and his fortune; outstrip him even in both qualities, so that the doctrine you herald may be everywhere the first and the last. What a testament! It is couched in few words, but they are not the words of man. Search where you will, you will elsewhere never meet such words: “Go, teach all nations." There is but one who uttered them; there is but one who could utter them; one who knew the mighty power of his words. As you can well imagine, dying men desiring to leave something after them, weigh well their last directions, and give none that may eventually prove false or vain. An expression as absolute as this, "Go, teach all nations," supposes boundless certainty: the glance of a prophet who, about to lay him down, sees mankind forever attentive and obedient to his grave. Now, these words were spoken by Jesus Christ- the first, and the last he alone pronounced them. Nevertheless, I grant that they are but words; we must see whether fulfilment attended them. Not long after these words were spoken, a singular phenomenon occurred in the world. The universethat something which flies and still remains, which suffers and which laughs, which makes peace and war, which overthrows and crowns kings, which is tossed about unconscious whence it comes or whither it goes; that chaos, in fine, hears with amazement a sound of which it had no previous conception, and which it does not understand. As, when in the stillness of night, we hear some unknown creature moving near us, so the universe for the first time hears a word instinct with life and motion, which is at Jerusalem, at Antioch, at Corinth, at Ephesus, at Athens, at Alexandria, at Rome, in Gaul, from the Danube to the Euphrates, and beyond them-a word which has travelled further than Crassus and his legions, further than Cæsar; which speaks to the Scythians as well as to the Greeks; which knows neither strangers nor enemies a word which is neither bought nor scld, which has neither fear nor pride — a simple word, which says: "I am the Truth, and there is no other." St. Paul has already appeared before the Areopagus, and astonished those ancient seekers of novelty by his new doctrines; they coined a word to paint their surprise a happy expression, which characterizes the phenomenon of which the world begins to suspect the power: "What seeks he from us, say they, "this sower of words?" These philosophers had seen men discourse, divide, analyze, demonstrate, win fortune and fame by rhetoric and philosophy; they had not yet seen truth sown in the human race, like fertile grain, which germs in due time, and requires only its proper nature to flourish and bear fruit. The thing was accomplished. The Roman Empire could no longer hide from itself the apparition of a new reality, which did not come from itself, which became established there without its aid, and was already spreading beyond its limits. The Roman Empire became Christian by the apostolate; the barbarians also became Christians in their turn by the same means. And when a new world revealed itself to Vasco de Gama and to Christopher Columbus, legions of missionaries hastened upon their steps; India, China, Japan, islands and kingdoms without number, were evangelized. From the Canadian lakes to the banks of Paraguay, America was visited by the word of Christ; it dwelt in the forests, upon the rivers, in the clefts of the rocks; it charmed the Carib and the Iroquois; it loved and was beloved with an ardor, all its own, by a thousand lost races in those vast continents. now, notwithstanding the evils which have decimated it in Europe, and which appeared to have dried up the milk in its breast, it pursues the distant work of propagation. And even Oceanica, a world dotted over the ocean, received upon the ridges of its islets the doctrine which has converted the great lands; the ancient missions flourish anew, new ones commence, and blood still flows for truth as in the time of Galerius and of Diocletian. You have this spectacle before your eyes; the charity of Catholic doctrine is not an antiquity of the museum; it lives among you, it comes from you; your brethren, by country and family, at the moment in which I speak, cover with their voices and their virtues all the points of the globe. Every day men are imprisoned, murdered, mangled, and die of heat, of hunger, of thirst, forgotten by the whole world, but unshaken and happy, because they have been chosen to accomplish the testament of Jesus Christ: "Go, teach all nations!" Questions: Give all the meanings of the word "testament." In which sense is it used here? What was the Areopagus? How do the words “Go teach all nations" prove the divinity of Christ? What famous infidel has shown from them the divinity of our Lord? Give the second and third paragraphs in your own words. Retain the sentences, but wherever possible substitute synonymes for the words of the text. THE END OF MAN. I COME to thee, once more, my God! No longer will I roam; For I have sought the wide world through, |