danger, or persecution, or the sword? In all these things we overcome, because of Him that hath loved us."

What a strange spectacle is presented to us in this land of civil and religious liberty! Thousands professing the Christian religion, whose chief commandment is that of brotherly love, engaged in an unholy and unjust warfare against the largest organized body of Christians in the world. Does it not remind us of the words of Christ to His apostles: "Yea, the hour cometh when whosoever killeth you will think that he doth a service to God?" In this country alone there are millions not connected with any Christian denomination. One I would think that these millions of infidels would afford a vast and luring field for Christian zeal and proselytism. Yet a large number of Christians think it more fitting and expedient to engage in domestic strife and to pit their forces one against another. Does it not seem strange that Christian bodies differing widely one from another in tenets and in sentiments and bitterly opposed by their religious affiliation can amicably unite in pursuance of an unchristian policy, namely, concerted hate and opposition towards another venerable Christian body? How vividly it reminds us of the reconciliation and renewed friendship between Herod and Pilate because of their common attitude towards the poor Victim of humanity our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (Luke xxviii, 12).

With the greater part of the world arrayed against the Church of Christ is it any wonder that sometimes on account of apparent abjection she provokes pity or perhaps contempt? Or need we wonder that certain lukewarm Catholics are scandalized at her seeming weakness? They indeed forget, or do not know, that the Church is an admirable and mysterious composite of greatness and lowliness, of strength

and weakness, just like Christ, her Founder. Could there be anything more abject or weaker in appearance than our Blessed Lord at certain intervals in His life? He knew indeed that many would be shocked at His abasement, and he began His public life by saying: "Blessed are they that shall not be scandalized in me." He was great and glorious when manifesting in His divinity in the miracles He performed; in giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf; in cleansing lepers and raising the dead to life; in walking upon the waters and stilling the tempests; in His transfiguration on Mount Tabor and in His resurrection from the dead. But He descended to the depths of humiliation in yielding to hunger and thirst, to fatigue and sweat, to sorrow and anguish of soul, to birth in a stable and death upon a cross. In fact His life fluctuated between the glory of Tabor and the shame of Calvary. At times when our Lord went to the extreme of human weakness, heaven interposed to vindicate His divinity. Thus when He was baptized in the Jordan a voice is heard from heaven saying: "This is my beloved Son"; after His fast in the desert an angel is sent to minister at His table; during His agony in the garden an angel is sent to comfort Him; and when He was put to death, heaven frowned upon the deed and protested against the crime of deicide.

So, too, the Church of Christ, which is His Body, has proceeded on her victorious career, alternating between exaltation and humiliation, between strength and weakness. Like Him she had to tread the dolorous Way of the Cross, and, according to all human conception or estimation, she was more than once consigned to the tomb. The Almighty intervened, however, and she rose glorious and triumphant. Her deepest humiliations have always been the prelude of her most glorious victories, and this will be found true if we con

sider her in conflict with Judaism or paganism, with heresy or moral corruption. Not once, but many times in her history, the invisible glory that dwelt within her was made visible in the splendor of her earthly achievements. We thus see, as it were, the ebb and flow of the divine life within her, sometimes raising her to the loftiest heights of sanctity and power, sometimes permitting human weakness and perfidy to assert itself and to bring sorrow and humiliation upon her. Wherefore it can be truly said that the Church, like Christ Himself, has had her Tabor and her Calvary. For this same reason she is sometimes represented in Scripture as a house built upon a rock, strong and unassailable; at other times as a ship in the midst of the sea, at the mercy of winds and waves, storm-tossed and weather-beaten.

The Church, then, like Christ, is a dual nature, that is to say, human and divine; and, like Him, too, she is a mystery of divine strength under the guise of apparent feebleness. We should not be surprised, then, if at any time in her life the human or the divine element should become the more conspicuous. Above all things we should not be unduly shocked or scandalized if she is affected with lowliness or humiliation. For as history shows that she is then most to be feared by her enemies, so also in this extreme she is most worthy of our esteem and affection.

We cannot, of course, but deprecate the campaign of falsehood and slander that is waged against her, but we should hesitate to suspect the Church of impotence or inactivity, for Christ suffered in silence and did not turn away His face from them that rebuked Him and spat upon Him (Is. 1, 6). If our sympathy for the Church in her hour of trial is sincere, let it not be shown in idle expressions of commiseration or in mere protestations of loyalty, but by the adoption into our

lives of that which she stands for, namely, purity and uprightness of life, for nothing else can bring such comfort to her maternal heart and nothing else is so efficacious in silencing the voice of slander. When our Blessed Lord was dying on the Cross and was of all beings the most desolate and miserable, the penitent thief turned to Him, acknowledged His divinity, and besought His mercy. Our Lord promised him an immediate reward. And why? Because He rejoiced in this tribute of faith and confidence when He was practically abandoned by heaven and earth and when His weakness was such as to repress rather than inspire faith and attachment. So also, dear friends, when the Church, His beloved spouse, is affected with weakness or humiliation, it is then, above all times, that our faith and confidence in her should be unshaken. Our attachment to her then will be all the more acceptable and more meritorious, and we may entertain the comforting assurance that when trial and sorrow are no more, we, too, will stand by her side at the right hand of the Father in the kingdom of heaven.

IN offering to the League of the Sacred Heart, and thereby to the entire Catholic world, the battle against Freemasonry as the primal intention of their prayers and practices for October, 1913, Pope Pius X was in unison with all his predecessors from Clement XII in 1738 to Leo XIII in 1890, who condemned Fremasonry as anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, and immoral and pronounced excommunication against Catholics who should enter it. This alone is proof sufficient that Masonry is to be avoided and combated as a thing essentially evil; but as it has cunningly persuaded many that its object is merely social and fraternal, and a large number of "outer " Masons in English-speaking countries who are kept ignorant of its real designs do honestly so believe, some knowledge of its inner purpose and procedure as revealed by its own authoritative exponents and historians will help to guard against and combat it intelligently.

Its claims to antiquity to Hiram, Solomon, the Pharaohs, and even Noah and Adam as its founders are myths, invented in the eighteenth century and since, to dazzle its dupes with flexible symbols drawn from all systems and all lands. It was originally a political society formed by English and Scotch Royalists in support of the Stuart cause (1645) under the disguise of a surviving guild of operative masons, and its