them in their very root; it poisoned their very best works, ruined all their virtues, and destroyed their whole merit. When they prayed, they chose thoroughfares and public places for this purpose, that people passing by might see and take notice of them. When they distributed alms to the poor, they caused a trumpet to sound before them, that every one might be informed of their charitable dispositions. When they fasted, they put on an air of sadness, disfigured their faces, and affected to look pale, that the world might entertain a favourable opinion of the rigour and austerity of their fasts. Our Blessed Saviour who perfectly knew the malice of every sin, with its fatal influences and consequences, seems to warn us in the Gospel, against no one crime in nature more frequently than against vainglory, and its usual attendant, hypocrisy, as it is under the shelter of this most pernicious weed that all vices grow, and every virtue is blasted. Beware, says he, Luke, c. xii. v. 1, of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy; and Mat. c. vi. v. i. Take care not to perform your justice before men, that you may be seen of them; otherwise you shall not have a reward from your Father who is in Heaven. And that the light which is in us may not be darkness, he orders us to pray in private, when we pray in particular, and when we give alms, not to let the left hand know what the right hand gives; and when we fast, to anoint our head and wash our face, that is, to rectify our intention, to purify our hearts and discharge every duty with a sincere and effectual desire to obey, please and glorify the Lord our God, who sees us in private, and will reward us in public, provided we make his honour and glory our last end, and the ruling principle of all our good actions.

Another capital vice that Christ reproached the Pharisees with, was their want of fraternal charity, and their rash censorious disposition to judge and condemn others without sufficient grounds. They had so presumptuous an opinion of their own imaginary excellence, that they looked down with scorn and contempt upon their neighbour, and were so quick-sighted as to discern a mote in his eye, Mat. c. vii. v. 3. at the same time that they did not perceive a beam in their own eyes; that is, they censured his lesser failings, and even misconstrued his innocent actions, but were blind to their own greater faults, and overlooked the malice and corruption that their hearts were filled with. They separated themselves from infidels and publicans, as from persons that were unworthy even to touch their gar ments, and observed with the utmost punctuality and exactness certain ceremonies, such as washing their hands before meat, and the like, but failed in the observance of the indispensable duties of charity and brotherly love, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel, Mat. c. xxiii. that is, observing the law in matters of little consequence, whilst they transgressed its most weighty and essential precepts without remorse. He therefore compared them to whitened sepulchres, which are fair without,

and appear beautiful to men, but are foul within and full of all corruption; for, in like manner they appeared outwardly just to men, but within were full of hypocrisy and palliated a large stock of pride, envy, jealousy, disdain and contempt of others, under the cover of sanctity and he mask of an apparent piety.

Is not this, my brethren, a natural picture of the conduct of several persons of our days, who deceive themselves with the empty shadow of virtue, and neglect the substance? If we confront their lives with the lives of the Pharisees, what a near resemblance shall we discover between them? How many will you find, in the very midst of Christianity, whose lives are a strange medley of real sins and counterfeit virtues? They stumble at straws and leap over blocks; they scruple trifles, and violate the most important duties with little or no remorse; they tremble at phantoms, and despise realities; they are exact and formal, even to a nicety, in performing certain works of supererogation, which they impose on themselves, or have a relish for, and they overlook the great precepts of charity and brotherly love without any concern; they refrain their hands from gross crimes of a scandalous nature, that would reflect dishonour on them in the eyes of the world, but they pay no attention to their interior, which is full of poison and deadly corruption; they carry a fair outside, but make no account of indulging evil thoughts and desires, of entertaining resentments and ainmosities, of forming rash judgments and groundless suspicions of their neighbour, and harbouring hatred, envy, malice and revenge in their hearts. They will sometimes spend whole hours in running over a number of vocal prayers and customary devotions in the morning, and employ the remainder of the day in defaming a neighbour and blackening his character with vile calumnies and detractions; they appear to be models of piety in the house of God, but upon the least cross they meet with, or the smallest contradiction that thwarts their inclinations, they abandon themselves to the sallies of their passions, and become sour, peevish, ill-humoured, impatient, and intolerable in their family at home. They have hearts of flint when the cries of the poor resound in their ears; they think nothing of stopping the wages of a servant, of depriving the honest tradesman of his due, of wronging the helpless widow and the fatherless orphan, of refusing to pay their lawful debts, and make restitution of what they unjustly acquired and as unjustly possess. What is this else, my brethren, but pharisaical piety and false virtue? This is what made St. Jerom cry out and say, Wo be to us Christians, who are so unfortunate as to inherit the vices of the Pharisees! The dreadful menaces which the Gospel thunders out against them, should deter us from following their example, and should inspire us with an utter aversion to their hypocrisy, pride and arrogance, vain-glory and ostentation.

Before all things, we must keep the commandments of God, and discharge the essential duties of charity and justice, in preference to any work of supererogation. We are to be

punctual and faithful even in little things. These we ought to do, says our Saviour, Luke, c. xi. v. 42. and not leave great and weighty things undone. We are to comply with our religious duties, and fulfil all the obligations of our respective states and conditions of life with such an outward decency as may give edification to all that see us. We are to encourage each other mutually to virtue by the light of our good example; for Christ orders us to let our light shine before men; but then our last end in all things must be, that our Father, who is in Heaven, may be glorified thereby. He regards the motive and intention upon which we act more than the action, and requires us to be as strictly virtuous in his sight as we appear in the eyes of the world to be. His holy will is to be always the rule of our conduct; He only must be adored and worshipped in the temple of our souls; no idol of pride, or vain glory, must be suffered to stand on the altar of our hearts, or to share in the honour that is due to him alone. To seek ourselves, or Pharisee-like, to court the esteem and applause of the world in the performance of our spiritual and devotional exercises, is the ready way to destroy their merit, and to forfeit the Crown that Christ has promised to his faithful servants; since, as St. Paul speaks in his Epistle to the Galatians, Were I to study to please men, I would not be the servant of Christ. And, really, nothing is more unworthy a rational being, nothing more unbecoming a Christian, than to labour for the applause of the world and the encomiums of men, which cannot add a single grain to his merit, when he may acquire an eternal recompense from God by labouring for his honour and glory. Is not the esteem and empty applause of men too small a reward for a virtuous action? What can be more precarious, more inconstant, or more capricious, since those who love, esteem and praise us to-day, may hate, undervalue and decry us to-morrow? A false report, a mere groundless fancy, a casual indiscretion, is sufficient to rob a man in an instant of all the esteem and popular applause he has been labouring to acquire for a series of years.

The truly virtuous Christian, like unto the Apostle, sets no great value on the judgments of men; he seeks his happiness, and the recompense of his good works, only in God, and looks for nothing beyond him. Where his treasure is, there also is his heart, Mat. c. vi. v. 21. and the mark he constantly aims at, is this motto of St. Ignatius, To the greater glory of God. He amasses spiritual treasures for his soul, which neither the moth of vain-glory, nor the worm of pride, nor the rust of any criminal passion can consume, corrode or eat up, because he takes care to resist their suggestions, and to practice this short lesson

which Jesus Christ prescribes in the Gospel, Learn from me to be meek and humble of heart. He is convinced that humility is the basis, the guardian, and, as St. Augustine calls it, the fortress and the citadel of every virtue. It cherishes, preserves, and secures the other virtues; for, as natural fire is preserved under ashes, so the supernatural fire of charity, attended with the whole train of the other virtues, is never more safe or better secured than when it is hidden under the ashes of a profound humility. Herein consists the difference between charity and humility. Charity covers a multitude of sins, 1 Pet. c. iv. Humility covers and hides a multitude of virtues which accompany it, and secures them from all imminent dangers; without it, no virtue can be acceptable in the sight of God; it is the first, the second, and the third degree to raise us to glory, as St. Augustine says. If it does not precede the other virtues to prepare us for them; if it does not accompany them to sanctify them; if it does not follow them to preserve them, we will lose the fruit and benefit of them. It was the want of humility that rendered the virtues of the Pharisees so defective, and deprived them of the benefit of all their outward works of piety and devotion. Their misfortune should be a warning to us to practice what they were deficient in, and to keep at the greatest distance from the vices for which they were reproved.

O sweet Jesus, grant us this grace, we most humbly beseech thee. Thou hast taught us humility by thy word; thou hast taught us humility by thy example. O may we imitate thee by humbling ourselves here on earth, that we may be found worthy on the last day to be exalted to the kingdom of Heaven, and to inherit those never-fading Crowns of Glory which thou hast prepared for thy faithful servants. And which I wish you all, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST.

On Christian Temperance and Sobriety.

Accipiens septem panes, et gratias agens, fregit et dabat Discipulis suis ut apponerent. Marc. c. viii. v. 6.

Jesus taking the seven loaves and giving thanks, he broke and gave them to his
Disciples to set before the multitude.
Mark, c. viii. v.6.

WE read in this day's Gospel that a great multitude of people, consisting of about four thousand persons, having fol

lowed our Divine Redeemer into the desert with an ardent desire of hearing the word of God, exposed themselves by their zeal to the danger of fainting in the way with hunger, as they were fasting after the fatigues of a long and painful journey of three days, and were not provided with the common necessaries of life, having no more than seven loaves and a few little fishes among them all; a small pittance for four thousand people! But he who embraces all mankind with the tenderness of a father, and who drew the universe out of nothing by his almighty power, took care to provide for the subsistence of their bodies, after he had nourished their souls with the spiritual food of his heavenly doctrine; for he multiplied the loaves and fishes in such a manner, that seven baskets were filled with the fragments which remained, after the whole multitude had eaten as much as satisfied their appetite. This illustrious miracle affords us several excellent lessons concerning Christian temperance, one of the four cardinal、 virtues, which are so called from a Latin word that signifies a hinge, because they are, as it were, the hinges on which all the moral virtues of a Christian life chiefly depend. St. Gregory the Great, speaking of the duties of Christian temperance, remarks three great disorders with regard to the nourishment of the body, which it is the duty of temperance to retrench and rectify. First, a servile attachment to the body. Secondly, excessive repletion and surfeiting. Thirdly, an over-great anxiety and solicitude in procuring nice and delicate meats. The principal function of temperance is to govern, regulate, and subject the body to the spirit, in order to subject the spirit the more easily to God. For this end, it moderates that inordinate affection which makes a man in some measure a slave to his body. Secondly, it restrains our sensual appetites from brutal excesses, hinders us from surpassing the bounds of want, and makes us rest contented with what is necessary for our support. Thirdly, it retrenches all delicacy in seeking nice and exquisite meats to please and gratify the palate, nothing being more contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, and to that obligation which it enjoins to lead a penitential life, and mortify the flesh with its vices and concupiscences, These disorders, which occur so frequently in the use of that food, which the bountiful Author of nature has created for our necessary support, and intended for our relief, are pointed out to us in this day's Gospel, and therefore I shall make them the subject of the following discourse. In the first place, I will shew you what defects and abuses we are to avoid in the refection of our bodies; and in the second you shall see what sanctity this refection is susceptible of, and by what means it may be purified and perfected. Let us previously invoke the aid of the Divine Spirit, through the intercession of the blesssed Virgin, &c. Ave Maria.

Experience convinces us, that there is no action of human life more liable to great abuses and disorders than the nourish