lightly of Religion, and would have you to be as light-minded as themselves. Regard them not; you can live to yourselves I mean, however much you may

:

have to mix with them, you can always do it with prayer in your heart against giving them countenance, and for them; and can always feel that your heart is set on higher things, is set on your treasure which is in Heaven.

I need hardly mention, I hope, to Christian men and women, members of the Catholic Church of CHRIST, that any discouragement from without, from the enemies of the Faith, they are to repel by totally disregarding it. You are not to heed anything which may fall, as I know much does fall, from the heretic and the blasphemer; you are only not to be partakers of their sin by reviling again. The LORD will reward them: you must pray for them. Every scoff, every blasphemy, every stumbling block put in the way of these little ones, is damnatory of them; let it not be sin to you. It is needful that

offences come, but woe to the man by whom the offence cometh.

Can you weigh these and such like discouragements against the quiet happiness of a holy life? Can you live in the world and see round you the sinner and the saint dying, and not long to be sharers of that peace here, which is to be carried on through the grave and gate of death, and to be made perfect in Heaven.

If any have made up their minds to serve the world, to forget GOD, to put off the day of thought, to stifle their Baptismal Grace, to be bold where Angels tremble, let them be sure of this one truth, with which I conclude what I have to say to them,-that when they are dying they will tremble, and when they are dead their souls will be lost for ever. May GOD of His mercy grant that we may all be found His servants at the day of the LORD. Your lives are fleeting on: you have now, for instance, a week less to live than you had last Sunday; think how much a week will be when your life

comes to be counted out by minutes. You have a foundation laid for you, the Rock of Ages, JESUS CHRIST; you can lay no other; you need desire to lay no other; you do not. Continue to build up yourselves in your most Holy Faith, in prayer, in praise, in Sacramental Obedience, in a holy chastened life, and HE who has never lost one of those whom His FATHER gave into His Hand, will welcome you as good and faithful servants.

SERMON VII.

THE WORLD'S POLLUTIONS.

2 EP. S. PET. ii. 20.

For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.

THIS is a passage full of instruction: we learn,

I. That the world pollutes.

II. That we may escape its pollutions. III. That our way of escape is through the knowledge of the LORD and SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

IV. That some are entangled in the pollutions of the world again, and are overcome by them.

V. That their latter end is worse with them than the beginning.

I. Who doubts that the world pollutes?

who that recollects his Heavenly washing in Baptism, and then views his own heart, can help seeing that the soul which was then left spotless, has been mired and soiled by the filth of the world since? No one who is true to himself will not be alive to the fact, that even if he has lived a life of holiness ever since his Baptismal vows, still the daily contact with the world has had a tendency to pollute the virgin whiteness of his Christian spirit.

There seems indeed to be a something in all the business of the world, which, if left alone, will soil the believer. I speak to men and women who know the world and something of themselves: there is, I say, a character in all worldly transactions as such, to clog and pollute the spirit of man. The excitement, the interest, the deep thought, the patience of bodily labour, which are necessary to conduct human affairs; the eagerness with which success is enjoyed; the bitterness with which disappointment is felt, all in their several ways, tend, of them