Page:For Remembrance (ed. Repplier) 052.jpg

sciousness and live only long enough to know their misery,—from all this bleak and wintry waste, full of darkness and death, I turn to the pure hearts of women who love and again the light plays around me. I drink the balmy air; the birds sing, the waters leap for joy, the mountains lift their heads, and I am in God's world and am His child.

When glancing athwart many a sad and gloomy page of history I read of schism and heresy, of hate and cruelty; of bitter controversies that never end; of pride and ambition, of greed and lust,—I think of the hosts of holy women who have followed the Church like the chosen few who followed Christ on the narrow, bloodstained way that led to Calvary; who watch and wait, who serve and are helpful, who work and are silent; and I am certain that the cause which century after century thus constrains thousands of the purest and gentlest hearts to sacrifice their lives to the highest and most unselfish ends is the cause of God, the cause for which Christ suffered and died.

Something of all this, my dear ladies and sisters of the Sacred Heart, may be deemed appropriate as part of the celebration of the centenary of the foundation of your society, which sprang from the heart of Jesus, the open and exhaustless fountain of the pure love of God and man. As life is a continuous victory over its changing environments, it is natural that the soul should seek to fix what is fleeting in its existence by holding steadfastly to the times and places that are most sacred. Thus in memory we are glad to gather about the homes of our childhood, while the fields and the hills, the clouds and the stars, the birds and the domestic animals even, return to help complete the scene; from the midst of which those about whom our earliest and purest affections centered look forth upon us again with a love that seems eternal. The seasons come and depart, the flowers bloom and fade, the young grow old and the old pass away, but the soul is an abiding principle of life and love which, though the visible universe should vanish utterly, would still find itself at home with the Eternal, with God. The stronger the individual, the more permanent the family, the more vital and persistent the religion, the greater is the power to inspire

36