view—childhood, boyhood, youth, manhood, distinct but continuous, seen all in one moment; there are lights of great brightness descending from God, and spots very dark blotting the light ascending from ourselves. How is it possible that I should be chosen to be a priest? I know more sins of my own than of my companions in boyhood who were not called to come so near to God. Was it that He saw that I should not otherwise be saved? that I am not fit to battle with the world, or even to live in the world? that without the surroundings and supports of a priest's life and state I should have sunk under the fraud, or force, or fascinations of the world? When I remember what I was, how can I dare to take the word of God in my mouth? When I warn men against sin, why do they not say, "Physician, heal thyself"? When I tell them of their faults, I hear them say, "Thou hast a beam in thine own eye," and, as S. Gregory says, ulcus in facie. And when I preach the reign of the love of God in the heart, and generosity, and self-oblation, knowing what I am—my impatience yesterday and my shrinking to-day—a voice says to me, "Thou whited wall." Every priest who knows himself will know what it is to be discouraged, saddened, depressed by a multitude of crosses and disappointments, but none are
