THE APOSTLE OF YOUTH
of them to fight under His divine standard. For the youthful Levites would not leave the dear Father and apostle who had saved them, who had led their footsteps into this new world of spiritual beauty, of glory, of undreamed-of possibilities of good; by his side they would labor, would spend the God-given talents he had discovered and brought to light, would give their lives with daily increasing ardor to the great apostolate in which he had already achieved such prodigies of moral change.
And the pencil of the Holy Ghost was summoned to write the laws of this new gathering of priests. The spirit of St. Francis of Sales, always the guiding spirit of Don Bosco, was evoked—the spirit of love, of sweetness, of strength, which characterized that most humble and most beloved of saints and missionaries—to drench this new offspring of his and make each of them another Sales to preach and illustrate by example that Christ's Gospel is one of love.
Through all these years, Don Bosco's ideal of organized spiritual activity grew continually; his thought and experience were always on the alert for improvement in details, and, humble to the heart's core, he was ever ready to seek the counsels of his early confreres, especially of Don Michele Rua, his first priestly conquest of Valdocco for the Order of St. Francis of Sales, of whom he said: "Observe and study Don Rua,
for he is a saint." So that at last a compact body
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