In the Holy Nativity, there is first a postulancy of six months, afterwards a two years' novitiate, and before final reception as a full member of the society, a period of two years as Junior Professed. It is this long and careful training that has given such stability to its members, and union and happiness to them. Often the world, looking upon them from without, asks if these recluse are really happy in their dedicated life? So far as my experience has gone, and it is confirmed by the united testimony of the religious themselves, there is no life that is so full of peace, true comfort, and joy. If it is a life of sacrifice, it is also a life of present as well as future reward.

And how shall a soul know whether it is called to this life or not? The very desire that becomes permanent is one sign of a call. The spirit of devotion and love for our Lord, and desire to forward His Kingdom, adds its weight to the call. There often is such a fervent desire for a life apart from the world, that the soul feels assured that Christ has spoken to it. Then there are the outward and providential signs of God's leading to it. There are some duties to parents, aged or destitute, which might be a primary duty. But where a daughter would think it right to leave her parents for the married state, she has a right to follow the call to a higher duty to be joined to Christ. It is most common, however, for parents, in the present uninstructed state of our Church concerning the life, to make objections. They do not want to give up their children or be separated

from them. Yet if an advantageous offer of marriage came to them they would not hold their child back from it. Indeed they know they would have no right to do so, for God has ordained marriage. One must leave father and mother to enter into it. The call to be joined to Christ is the call to enter into a special union or mystical marriage with Him, and no parent has a right upon religious grounds to keep a child from it. They run a great risk, and commit a great sin, if they put hindrances in the Lord's way. God, who has a right to take their child away by death, has the right to take the child into religious life, and parents should realize that the call is a call to them as well as to their daughter. It is a call to both parties, and if they respond to it, for it must be somewhat of a sacrifice, God will give them a special blessing; they will share in the reward.

Of course persons may think they are called when they are not fitted really for the life. This can only be known and decided by a trial of it. No other state allows of such a trial, and the best way to prevent anyone from joining a society is by letting her make a trial; for communities, as a rule, reject about fifty per cent of aspirants. Sisters do not want to admit any as members of their household unless they are fitted especially for it.

If we are asked what disposition aspirants should have, they would be these: a desire to leave the world; a spirit of humility; a willingness to be moulded by the rule; a desire to do Christ's service; a longing for perfection. "And blessed, thrice blessed," wrote

Dr. Pusey, "they whom Christ alone sufficeth, the only aim of whose being is to live to Him and for Him. For Him they adorn themselves; His eyes alone they desire to please through His graces in them; Him they long to serve without distraction; at His feet they ever sit; to Him they speak in their inmost souls, to Him they hearken. He is their light, their love, their holy joy; to Him they ever approach in trustfulness; Him they consult in all things, on Him they wait; Him they love, even because they love Him. They desire nothing from Him but His love, desire no love but His. Blessed foretaste of life eternal, to desire nothing on earth but the life of angels and the new song; to be wholly His, whom her soul loveth, and He, the Lord of angels, to be wholly hers as He says, 'I am my Beloved's and my Beloved is mine."

CHAPTER V

PASTORAL WORK

"He that now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed: shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him." PS. cxxvi.

O

NE object I had in mind in going to England

in 1865, was to study the new methods of parochial work. A great change had taken place since the days of the Georges, when the Episcopate was regarded as a place of dignity and worldly comfort. While the clergy of that age were, on the whole, moral men, they had lost much of the sense of their priestly calling. They mixed, like other worldly men, in society, and it was not considered unclerical for them to ride to hounds. An idle Bishop, it is said, has been made an impossibility, and the spiritual character of the clergy has greatly advanced. Never, indeed, had the English clergy sunk to the low level that marked the Church of France before the Revolution, or the Church at Milan in the days of St. Charles Borromeo. For about eighty years no Archbishop of Milan was resident in his diocese. A Roman Catholic biographer of Borromeo says:

"The clergy generally exhibited the most unblushing contempt of the requirements of their sacred order; their immorality being in fact so public and systematic that it is presumed they have lost all sense of the obligations of their state. They