his sheep, he may be ever saying, Corona mea et gaudium meum. When he numbers up the sinners and impenitent, and the wrecked homes which he has laboured to save, he will remember how be has striven and prayed, how for their salvation he has "toiled all night" in the dark, with hardly a ray of hope, "and taken nothing," ready again to let down the nets at our Lord's bidding, and again to launch out into the deep, out of which all his striving and all his prayers have not yet saved them. This must meet us, as it met our Divine Master, in our daily labour. When we look upon them, we share the mental sorrows of our Lord on earth; when from them we turn to the field white for the harvest, He gives us a share of His joy in heaven.
There are five companies among his people who reward a priest in this life. First, every penitent soul has a history full of the sin of man and the love of God. Some were all but drowned in sin, and some were plucked from the fire. We did not know them before; they were brought to us as by chance. They were, as they thought, avoiding our confessional when they came into it; they thought to escape from us, when unconsciously they took themselves in the snare which was laid for them, not by us, who knew nothing of them, but by the hand of God. To bring
