PART FIRST.

INDIVIDUAL AND INTERNAL LIFE.

I ASSUME a holy vocation and a regular entrance, a pastoral and even a zealous spirit.

The pastor, even as the Christian, must fortify, must confirm his vocation (Bebaíav Tolɛiolaí, 2 Pet., i., 10). In this there is a mystery, the profound, invisible concurrence of the human will which is excited with the Divine will which excites it. It is with vocation as with conversion. In one sense, we are called but once, as we are converted but once; in another sense, we are called and converted every day. Analogy here should suffice, and even be an à fortiori argument; but the Gospel is explicit: St. Paul says to Timothy, "I put thee in remembrance, that thou stir up the gift of God which is in thee."-2 Tim., i., 6.

I dismiss the question whether there are not many whom it concerns to make to themselves a call, while they are already engaged in the work.

The exercise of the ministry, will not this of itself suffice for the confirmation of the call?-It should contribute to it, but it may also have the opposite effect. The exercise of the ministry endangers the spirit of the ministry, if it be not sustained from within. If there be not this balance, if the internal does not exert itself sufficiently on the external, the external injures the internal, as the internal no doubt would fail without external action. There is danger that function

may become a substitute for feeling.

Our first impressions have in them much of imagination; when this is once exhausted, and without further aid from it we are made dependent for feeling on the heart and the conscience, it is much to be feared that we shall have too little feeling.t

We must not depend on the vivacity of our first impressions; that which affects us most to-day will leave us cold soon: For the influence of things on our sensibility we shall have to rely on their direct relation to our heart and con

"The first time the priests and Levites saw in the desert the holy tabernacle which Moses was directed to construct, the miraculous cloud which went before it, the glory of God which covered this holy place, the oracles which proceeded from the inner sanctuary, the magnificence and the august solemnity of the sacrifices and ceremonies, they could not but approach them with a holy dread. Of the purifications, and all the other preparations which were prescribed to ministers by the law, they omitted nothing. But gradually the daily sight of the tabernacle made them familiar with this holy place; the precautions ceased with their awe; the prodigy of the pillar of fire, which God continued there every day, became contemptible by long custom; profanations soon followed; rash ministers ventured to offer strange fire; others usurped the functions which belonged exclusively to the high-priest; at last the daughters of Midian soon became to them a stumbling-block and a scandal, and hardly in the entire tribe of Levi could a Phinehas, a holy and zealous priest, be found, who dared to avenge the honor of the priesthood and the sanctity of the law, which had been shamefully dishonored before an unfaithful people."-MASSILLON, Discours sur la Nécessité où sont les Ministres de se renouveller dans l'Esprit de leur Vocation.

+ In the first fervor of the Christian and of the minister, imagination easily, and even necessarily, intermingles. In all life imagination has its part. It is a kind of vehicle without which many ideas could not reach us. And how far does its power extend! even to making us conscious that we have a life within us to which we are entire strangers. It enters into all our moral acts, and in some in a very high degree. When it leaves us, every thing it has created disappears with it as a phantom, leaving within us the net product of the work it has wrought in us. This often is little. The lees only remain at the bottom of the cup-the cordial of imagination has been drunk.

science, and, from being apparently full of zeal, we may be come mere men of office. There must, then, be a renewal of our call, and in proportion as the charm of novelty is ef faced, the moral element must be strengthened.

Now the first means of renewing our vocation as pastors is to renew our vocation as Christians. The Christian is not to be forgotten in order to dream only of the pastor; the one can not of itself, and all alone, do the work of the other. Even as pastors, it is important to remind ourselves that, of the souls which have been confided to our care, our own are the first; that toward these first our ministry should be exercised; and that, first of all, we should be pastors to ourselves.

Whether it be that, to advance the salvation of others, we must not neglect our own, or that justice requires each one's charity to begin with himself, St. Paul, in addressing himself to ministers in the person of Timothy, speaks to them first concerning themselves: "Take heed to thyself and to thy doctrine, for in so doing (in doing these two things, and not the last only) thou shalt save thyself and those who hear thee."-1 Tim., iv., 16. "Take heed to yourselves, and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers."-Acts, xx., 28.

Nevertheless, we are also required to renew directly our

* "To observe the order of St. Paul (Acts, xx., 28; 1 Tim., iv., 16), a minister must begin with himself, fulfill his own duties, and care for his own salvation before all things. Before going abroad from love to his neighbor, let him withdraw into the secret place of the divine holiness. Before compassionating the misery of others, let him be sensible of his own ills and of his own weaknesses. And, before urging others to obey the law of God, let him first obey it himself. The first duty of a bishop is to be holy."-DUGUET, Traité des Devoirs d'un Évêque, art. ii., § 1. Gregory of Nazianzen expresses himself thus ! ́on the subject: "We must first be pure, and then purify others; be taught, and then teach others; become light, and then enlighten others; draw near to God ourselves, and then induce others to approach him; sanctify ourselves, and then make others holy."

vocation as pastors, which means that we must be always renewing in ourselves the disposition which was decisive in respect to our vocation.

If, therefore, the exercise of the ministry do not of itself suffice for this constant renovation, we must seek the means of it externally, apart from the ministry.

The first of these, which is rather the condition of all, is solitude. Let us not exaggerate; let us not attempt to recommend solitude to the exclusion or detriment of social life. For the advantage of this, and as a means of better preparing himself to improve it, must the pastor sometimes withdraw himself from society. In a solitude too profound, too protracted, there are peculiar dangers, and greater ones, perhaps, than those of the world. When habitual, solitude is contrary to the will of the Creator, who said it was not good for man to be alone; and against the mind of Jesus Christ, who prayed to his Father not to take us out of the world, but to keep us from the evil. As an exception, then, and not as a rule, is solitude to be recommended. But so regarded-regarded as an exception or as a remedy (we do not nourish ourselves with remedies), it is of great value.

We do not mean to say that solitude is good in itself: It is not, except with certain qualifications. It has often been spoken of with the unqualified enthusiasm which we have for what has once charmed us. Poets,† moralists, philosophers, have vaunted it; and this concert of praise, surely, is not without some foundation. But we must not be indiscriminate. What we have intended to recommend is, internal solitude, or the spirit of solitude. We must discipline ourselves to being alone in the midst of the world, to tranquillity

* See, on this subject, a discourse of M. Vinet, entitled La Solitude recommandée au Pasteur.-Edit.

+ See, among others, LA FONTAINE, dans Le Songe d'un Habitant du Mogol, le Juge arbitre, l'Hospitalier et la Solitaire.

in the midst of tumult, to stillness in the midst of excitement. Having made ourselves capable of this kind of solitude, we may hold ourselves quit of the other. When external solitude is denied to us, we think that the other, carefully cultivated, may be relied upon as sufficient.

External solitude is evil if it be not good. If we have the world in the heart, we shall take it with us into the closet. To an unsocial, envious, irritable man, who feeds upon his resentments or his hatreds, solitude of this kind is very injuri

ous.

And to men agitated by passion, we can, in many cases, recommend nothing better than intercourse with others who are pursuing some useful occupation. Solitude is good or evil according to the use we make of it.

But solitude can not fail to be useful to him who seeks good from it, precisely because he seeks it; and even, previous to experience of it in ourselves, we can easily understand that what makes outward things vanish, and silences the noises of the world, favors the interviews which we wish to have with ourselves; that, except in these circumstances, we can but partially hold these interviews; and, in particular, that the truths which concern the conscience here detach themselves better from all those foreign accessories with which they are overloaded and darkened in the discussions which are carried on respecting them.*

Life, in our day, is made up of so many elements, is cut into so many surfaces, that it produces a kind of bewilder

* Saint Gregory calls the occupations of the ministry a tempest of the spirit. Saint Bernard wrote to Pope Eugene thus: "Since all possess you, be one of those by whom you are possessed. Why should you alone be deprived of the gift which you make of yourself? How long will you not receive yourself, in your turn, among others? You know that you are debtor to the wise and the unwise, and do you refuse yourself only to yourself? All partake of you, all quench their thirst at your breast as at a public fountain, and do you hold yourself at a distance athirst!"-SAINT BERNARD, Traité de la Considération, Liv. i., ch. v.