doxes and contradictions which vex and harass a priest with perpetual disappointment. Where he looked for help he finds none; where he thought he could trust he finds his confidence betrayed; where he thought to lean for support he finds the earth give way. There is something in sorrow for sin which unites us with God. It alarms, and warns us that we are in the front of the battle, and that we can never put off "the whole armour of God." It is a wrestling with spiritual wickedness in the high places of subtilty and strength, in which souls perish before our eyes, and we ourselves are in danger. This braces and confirms our courage and self-command. But the petty and paltry faults of good people, the littleness and the selfishness, the self-pleasing and the refined insensibility to the sorrows, sufferings, and sins that are around them—these things irritate and provoke without rousing our self-control. We are tempted to fret and complain under our disappointments from good people; and we understand S. Paul's disappointment when he said, "I have no man so of the same mind, who with sincere affection is solicitous for you; for all seek the things that are their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ's."[1] As a rule, they who talk most do least,
- ↑ Philip, ii. 20, 21.
