from mere unbelievers is a barren religious profession, and a certain lifeless routine observance of some of the chief precepts of the Church. How sour and petulant they grow when the Church proclaims a fast? How little they really love the Church? They are mere worldlings, that are in the Church without being impressed by her spirit. It is true, they do not wish to let go of religion altogether; but they live on the outside of their lives, and consequently the other life is never understood, and exerts no positive influence on their lives.

There is no way to equip the soul to withstand the tremendous press of that great complex system of soul-destroying things that we call the world, except the building up within us of a spiritual resource. This can be done by proper reading, by thought and reflection. If a man could once for all assimilate the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it would give him the proper direction of life. He would realize the immense value of the other life, and the inanity of the worldly life; he would come to regard the things for which men give their lives, as things of little worth, mere transient things, to be laid aside when man shall be about to enter into his real life.

The interior Christians above mentioned do this. They judge and adjust the affairs of their life in conformity with the doctrines of Jesus. Their religion is a positive thing, a thing which they love. The hope of Heaven is by them reckoned as a possession. When the world is cold, and pushes them aside, they are still cheerful, for they have a resource within themselves. They do not ask to be understood by the world, or honored by it. They live in the presence of God, and they seek only his approbation. The sunshine of the grace of God diffuses itself through them and from them. They are bright and cheerful when worldlings are morose and fretful. They are not fearful of the loss of their possessions; for that which they have set their hearts upon can not be lost. If they are wronged, they are patient, for they leave their cause with God; if they are misjudged, they wait in silence for the vindication which will come from God. Thus they live cheerfully in waiting for the day when the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels to render unto every man according to his deeds. O, how much better it is to live for this eternal

destiny than for the base world that passes away! How glorious it is to find a man with disciplined, refined soul throwing his whole life into the great work of obtaining eternal life! Here is an achievement worthy of Christian endeavor. Those who live for this grand purpose feel not the keen disappointments of the men of this world. Their estates are in Heaven, and are not subject to the vicissitudes of time. They are broad-minded men, at the same time that they preserve all the old land-marks of faith. They put into effect the code of Christ in a world that follows another code. There will at times be friction between these two codes, wherein they must suffer worldly loss, but this very loss is a source of happiness to them. The high nature of the ideals which they follow gives an upward, purified tendency to their lives. Sordid selfishness gives place to the love of God and of man. Their retrospective glances are not the cause of bitter regrets, as is the case of worldlings; they have the blessed consciousness of duty done, of treasures laid up in Heaven; and when the summons of the Lord comes to them, it is not a cause of fear, but it is a glad summons to life.

It would be the greatest wisdom for a man to give a few moments of serious thought every day to the consideration of that one master sentence: "What shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life?" When the voice of the world is particularly powerful, and its incentives are especially strong, the reflections on that truth would temper the soul's unrest. Man must outlive time, and his deeds should be of a character to outlive time; but when the Lord shall come in his glory, as he has here predicted, all worldly achievement will be brushed aside, as the mist of the departing night before the sun; and then only the deeds that were done for the life beyond will be found available.

Luke speaks in this context of being ashamed of Christ; Matthew expresses the same thought in the thirty-second verse of his tenth chapter. The character of Christ is so grand that now no man is directly ashamed of Christ; but men often are ashamed to advocate what Christ stands for. This is in effect equal to being directly ashamed of Christ. In the first ages of the Church, when the name of Christian was a hated epithet,

it required moral courage to profess Christ. Christ is identified with his Church; and to-day in many lands his Church is derided and dishonored; her teachings and her practices are despised; hence there is danger that a man may thus be ashamed of Christ.

One of the great means of opposing the Catholic religion in the British Empire for many years was to make membership in it a social stigma. As the state was anti-Catholic, it was easy to establish a social code which made the profession of the true religion of Christ dishonorable. The enemies of the Church of Christ had in their hands the power of the state, the offices of government, the great part of the titles of nobility, the wealth, and the educational system. They strove to crush the Catholic religion by degrading it. Those who professed it were called aliens, enemies of the realm. For a long time no public office or vocation was open to the despised Catholic. If ever men were tried in regard to the loyalty to Christ it was in the bitter days of those penal laws. In this trial some did deny Christ, some were ashamed of the persecuted and degraded religion of Christ and gave up their faith for gain and honors. Human history in all its ages has its sad records, records of man's sin. The metal is tried in the furnace, and the pure gold is purified by fire. The executioner's sword, axe, and gibbet, the rack and the wild beasts are not a more fearful test than the world's cruel mandate that the followers of Christ shall be socially degraded. The foes of the Church have always employed the latter means with dreadful effect. Though violent persecution is no longer fashionable, the spirit of the world in many countries still endeavors to keep alive the idea that the true followers of Christ are of a lower social caste. Those of the Church's children who are much under the control of worldly influences are much swayed by this spirit, and they often give evidence that they are ashamed of Christ. They are ashamed to hold fast to the old faith lest they be thought bigoted or unprogressive: they prefer a reduced Christianity, a nauseating, luke-warm, compromise. They are ashamed of the practices of the Church, lest men should ridicule them. These men have no firm principles of religion: they would never stand firm in a violent persecution. With them all

things are weighed in the scales of worldly advantage, and their religion is a matter of convenience.

The

Christ's law teaches a man to humble himself, and to accept the foolishness of the cross; and poor cowardly man is ashamed of this; and thus he is ashamed of Christ. The natural man receiveth not the things that are of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him, and thus he is ashamed before the world to identify himself with such things. spirit of man is proud; the world filled with the spirit of unbelief stands ready to laugh at a man who follows closely after Christ. Hence a man must be prepared to undergo the scoffs of an unbelieving world, if he would follow the law of perfection. The destiny of those who are deterred from following Christ by the fear of the world's censure is not left in doubt; it is rejection by Christ in his judgment of the world. Christ terminates his present discourse with the statement: "Verily I say unto you: There be some of them that stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom."

This closing statement is hard to understand. Many different opinions have been advanced to explain it. The first sense conveyed by the statement would be that some of those who listened to Christ's discourse would live to see him coming in the glory of his second coming. But such sense is contradicted by the facts of history. The Apostles are dead; generations upon generations of men who came after the Apostles have died, and yet the second advent of Christ has not yet arrived. Hence it is evident that Christ alluded to some manifestation of the glory of his kingdom other than his coming at the end of the world.

Knabenbauer believes that Christ refers here to the fall of Jerusalem, inasmuch as such fall was a judgment of Christ upon the wicked city. He argues that such judgment is called a coming of Christ, in accordance with the phraseology of the Old Testament, wherein often God's act of judgment is spoken of as his coming. Cfr. Hab. III. 3; Is. XXVI. 21; XLII. 13; Micah, I. 3, etc. For this opinion Knabenbauer cites Calmet, Schegg, Bisping, Arnoldi, Reischl, Grimm, Schanz, Fillion, Keil, and Mansel.

Others believe that Christ speaks here of the great growth and expansion of the Church on earth. Before the death of the last of the original twelve Apostles, the Church had grown into a great organization, and had spread through the whole civilized world. This great expansion of the Church militant some believe to be signified by Christ's present words. This seems to have been the opinion of St. Gregory, St. Bede, Rhabanus Maurus, St. Thomas, Jansenius of Ghent, and Lamy. It is passing strange that Knabenbauer, who in his Commentary on Matthew had explained the words of Christ of the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, in his Commentaries on Mark and Luke accepts the opinion of St. Gregory, and refers Christ's words to the growth of his Church. This seems unreasonabble. The passages in the three Synoptists are absolutely parallel; and Christ must have referred to some one event; and it is evident that the Synoptists could not so distort the words of Christ that Mark and Luke would apply them to an event so utterly different from that intended by St. Matthew. Wherefore whatever opinion is adopted, it must apply to the three Synoptists.

Some authorities refer the present words of Christ to his transfiguration.

Knabenbauer rejects this opinion on the following grounds. It would be absurd, he says, to believe that Christ would say that there were men there standing by, who would not see death before an event, that was to take place six days later, should come to pass. He argues that the words of Christ clearly refer to some event so far removed, that some of those who were then present would have died before its verification, while others would live to see it.

It may however be argued, in support of the opinion, that Christ may have wished to invest his words with a veil of prophetic obscurity. The coming of Christ in his glory was an event which the Apostles evidently placed afar off; the declaration that some of them would live to see it brought the event close, while it left the precise manner and time indeterminate. The words of Christ would thus be true, if referred to the Transfiguration, even though those who heard them, drew from them the idea that the event was more removed.