a few equivocal exercises of piety, or superficial practices of religion. No, my brethren, his repentance was solid, true and lasting; his sorrow was efficacious; he never relapsed. It was sincere; it produced worthy fruits of penance, for he began it in the spirit of humility, and he completed it by charity. A grief universal penetrated his soul, and a love ineffable transported his heart. The penance of his heart was far more ardent than that of his body, and the emotions of his soul surpassed, by many degrees, what appeared in his actions.

Where is it we shall find one whose heart was inflamed with the rays of divine love like his? Are not all his writings chequered with the marks of this celestial influence? Who can describe the transports, raptures and extacies of his pious soul in his Divine Meditations, in his Manual, in his Soliloquies, and in his Commentaries on the Psalms of David? Do but open them wherever you please, and you will see the fire of divine love shining in every line; you will be persuaded that his pious soul breathed nothing but the purest flames of charity; and it is for this reason that he is usually represented with the smybol of a flaming heart, transfixed with the arrows of charity, and casting forth blazing rays of fire as out of a glowing furnace. O how often does he bless the happy instant of his return to God? How frequently does he regret every moment he had spent in the oblivion of him? When shall I see thee, my God! says he in one of his raptures; when shall I possess thee whom my heart sighs for, and my soul is impatient to behold? Ah, I loved thee too late; too late, alas! have I begun to love thee, O Beauty, ever ancient and ever new! Permit me, therefore, to begin my course again, that every moment of my life may be filled with tokens of my love, or rather consume me at present with the flames of thy eternal brightness, that I may no longer be divided from thee. O eternal verity, it is for thee I languish; thou art my God and what is not thee is nothing to me. Thou art a thousand times more amiable than the trifles and pleasures which thou dost banish. I am now full of thee, and rejoice in thee, for thou art my riches and my glory. Thy sacred word assures us, that we know not whether we are vessels of honour or disdain, worthy of love or hatred; but after examining my heart I feel I love thee, I know I love thee, nor can I doubt it; nor is my fear servile, or my hopes self-interested. Quench the fire of hell; I do not dread it because I love thee. Destroy Heaven; my joy, my felicity is only in loving thee. These, and a thousand such like overflowings of the heart, were the constant occupations of the seraphic Augustine.

Never was a heart occupied with a more active, a more constant, a more grateful, a more tender, or a more universal charity; never was any genius more artful in finding out

ways and means to testify the love he had for God and for his neighbour. Not satisfied with the apostolic labours of three and forty years after his conversion, he carried his views to future ages, and planted a religious order, that it might, after his death, continue to practice the most perfect maxims and counsels of the Gospel, and spread the grace of salvation to the extremity of the known world. The rule he drew up was deemed so wise, so prudent, and so perfect, that forty-six different orders in the Chuch have since embraced it, and the religious of his own institution became so numerous in a short time, that, exclusive of the multitudes that emigrated afterwards into the various kingdoms of Europe, there was scarce a city or town in Africk without a monastery of one or two hundred of them, even in his own days. May I not then say, as St. Basil was chosen by God to be the founder of religious orders in Asia, and St. Benedict in Europe, so, in like manner, St. Augustine seems to have been chosen to be the patriarch and first founder of religious institutions in Africa. Ecclesiastical writers count among his disciples, a great number of illustrious Saints and learned Doctors and Prelates, besides two thousand five hundred of the religious of his order, who suffered martyrdom in the bloody persecution that was raised by the Goths and Vandals. At length our glorious Patriarch was called from this life to the enjoyment of a better. Exhausted with labours, enriched with merits, after enlightening the earth with his glory, as the Scripture says of the Angel in the Apocalypse, he died a martyr of divine love, and sunk, like the phoenix in its native flames, in the midst of the palm branches he had planted and replenished with his own spirit. You have now, my brethren, heard how the great Augustine propagated the true light and perfect spirit of the Gospel by his wisdom and sanctity. But what impression should all this make in your souls? What advantages are you to derive from hence? If you wish to comply with the pious intentions of the Church in solemnizing the annual festivals of the saints, and announcing the panegyrics to the faithful, you are to admire devoutly the wonders of grace and mercy that Heaven has displayed in their favour. You are, as the Royal Prophet directs, religiously to honour, thank, glorify and praise the Lord in his saints, for the large profusion of the precious graces, gifts and blessings, which he has vouchsafed to confer on them; you are likewise to endeavour to render yourselves worthy of their patronage and intercession, by following their example, and copying after the virtues they practised here on earth. You will, perhaps, tell me that you are not blessed with the brilliant talents of Augustine, that you are not possessed of his profound wisdom and extensive erudition, that you are not qualified like him to be a champion of religion, to argue, defend, prove, dispute, convert and reclaim unbelievers and sinners from their errors

and evil ways. But will you tell me that you are not qualified, like Augustine, to correspond with the grace of God, to submit to the sweet yoke of the Gospel, and to hearken to the voice of the pastors and spiritual guides who have been appointed by Jesus Christ to lead you into the ways of salvaWill you tell me that you are not qualified to become

tion?

good Christians and Catholics, or to believe all that Christ has taught, and practice all that he commanded? Will you tell me you are not qualified, like Augustine, to cast off the works of darkness, and renounce those detestable habits of drunkenness, cursing, swearing and blaspheming, which render so many unfortunate sinners, a disgrace to Christianity, a scandal to the Church, and a reproach to their profession?

Though, my brethren, you are not endowed with the abilities of an Augustine, you are sufficiently qualified to prove and defend the truth and purity of your religion by the most convincing of all arguments, that is, by the purity of your morals and your edifying conversation. You are able to instruct your children and domestics in the fear of the Lord, and to convert and reclaim your strayed brethren by your exemplary conduct. Though you have not zeal enough to aspire to the perfection of Augustine, you have it in your power to imitate, at least in some degree, his conversion, his repentance, his humility and meekness, his piety and devotion, his love for God and for his neighbour. These virtues are within your reach, and centered in the sphere of your duty, and unless you bear some resemblance of Augustine herein, you cannot expect to be favoured with his intercession, nor to be crowned with him hereafter in the glory of Heaven.

The same grace that converted and sanctified him, is able to convert and sanctify you, let your case be ever so desperate, let your past sins be ever so numerous. You may still become vessels of election and favourites of Heaven, like Augustine, provided you return to the Lord your God in the sincerity of your hearts as he did, by a speedy, solid and efficacious repentance. The merciful arms of Jesus Christ are still open to embrace you; his precious blood will plead your pardon and cancel your sins if you renounce and detest them, in due time, with a contrite and humbled heart.

Grant this grace, O father of mercies and God of all consolation, to us all assembled here to praise and honour thee in thy saint. We request it unanimously and most humbly, in the name, and through the infinite merits of thy beloved Son and our dear Redeemer Jesus Christ, and we confidently hope to find acceptance through him in thy sight, and to be admitted one day into the charming mansions of everlasting bliss, which he has purchased for us by the effusion of his precious blood; and which, my brethren, I heartily wish you all, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST. On Sanctifying the Sabbath-Day.

Factum est cum intraret Jesus in domum cujusdam principis Pharisæorum Sabbato manducare panem, et ipsi observabant eum.-Luc. c. xiv. v. 1.

It happened when Jesus went into the house of a certain Pharisee to eat bread on the Sabbath-day, and they were watching him.

St. Luke, c. xiv. v.

THE Gospel of this day shews us, on the one hand, to what extremes the Scribes and Pharisees were hurried by their excessive pride and great want of charity; and on the other hand, it represents to us with what patience our Blessed Redeemer bore their insolence, and with what sweetness and meekness he endeavoured to reclaim them. It happened that he went into the house of a certain Pharisee to eat bread on the Sabbath-day, where the Pharisees took care to be present, not with a view of listening to his heavenly instructions, but of watching his conduct and censuring his most innocent actions. He foresaw that they would be scandalized at a miracle which he was about working, and blame him as a Sabbath-breaker for healing a man ill of a dropsy, who came to implore his divine assistance; but neither the fear of their censures, nor the evil dispositions of their hearts, were able to hinder our charitable Redeemer from pitying and relieving the afflicted and distressed objects who had recourse to him in their necessities, teaching us by his example, that we are not to be deterred from our duty, nor drawn from the practice of good works by the apprehension of being unjustly censured and misrepresented. The Evangelist tells us, that he first asked the Doctors of the Law and the Pharisees then present, If it was lawful to heal the sick on the Sabbath-day? Then he took hold of the sick man, restored him in an instant to his perfect health, and sent him away full of joy and penetrated with sentiments of gratitude. However, in order to remove the unjust scandal which the Pharisees had taken at this miraculous cure, he condescended so far to their weakness as to reason them out of their error, by asking them if an ox or an ass of their own should happen to fall into a pit, which of them would scruple drawing it out on the Sabbath-day? This question covered them with so much shame and confusion, that they could make no reply in their own defence; for their insatiable avarice, which was

represented by the dropsy that our Saviour cured the poor man of, influenced their reason so far, as to make them conclude that it was no violation of the Sabbath to take their ox or ass out of a ditch on that day; but their vanity and excessive desire to distinguish themselves by an exact and rigid observance of the Law, together with their want of fraternal love, made them overlook the distress of their neighbour and deem it unlawful to cure him on the Sabbath-day, under the specious pretext of piety. Thus it is, that the enemy of mankind often deceives sinners with the shadow of virtue, leaving them the appearance of conscience, and persuading them to scruple at trifles whilst they neglect the substance, and transgress the most essential duties without remorse. The observance of the Sabbath is indeed an important duty; two extremes, however, are to be carefully avoided herein. First, the rigid superstition of the Scribes and Pharisees, who were scandalized at seeing our Blessed Saviour performing works of mercy on the Sabbath day, and at his disciples plucking a few ears of corn and eating them, when they passed through the corn fields and were pressed with hunger. Secondly, the impiety and irreligion of those Christians, who are neither afraid nor ashamed to spend the Sabbath in drunkenness and rioting, in dissipation and licentiousness, in idle amusements and lawless practices, by which they pervert this day of grace and mercy into a day of wrath and perdition. To remedy such evils, and to excite you to a religious observance of the Christian Sabbath, is the design of the following discourse, wherein I will lay before you, first, the nature and original institution of the Sabbath; and secondly, the manner in which the obligation of sanctifying it is to be complied with. Let us previously invoke the light and assistance of the Holy Ghost, through the intercession of the blessed Virgin, &c. Ave Maria.

Amongst the various sinful abuses and disorders that reign at present in the very midst of Christianity, there is scarce any one that seems to call more loudly on the Preachers of the Gospel for an exertion of their zeal, than the scandalous practice of profaning the Sabbath-day. The sanctification of our souls, and the conduct of our lives the other six days of the week, depend, in a great measure, on the sanctification of this day, because a regular observance of it would contribute very much to facilitate the observance of the other divine precepts; and on the contrary, a constant transgression of this duty is generally attended with a total neglect and oblivion of the other great duties of religion. Nay, it is hard to conceive how people of business, servants and other laborious Christians can be said to serve God, and to take proper care of their souls, if they do not sanctify the Sabbath-day, because they are entangled in worldly cares all the remainder of the week, and engaged from morning till night in a continual drudgery, that