was a place where the edges were not quite together. Of course mamma would like to have the pie look well, with company to dinner. He tried to press them closer, but they would not meet.

Suddenly a chubby hand reached out, and a little finger disappeared into the pie, and, when it came out, two rosy cherries came with it, and were popped into a mouth as rosy as themselves.

One, two, three times it went in, before Teddy felt sure that the edges would meet, and then he hastily pinched them together and slipped away, with a little guilty feeling tugging at his heart. This was soon forgotten, however, in the bustle caused by the arrival of his aunt and cousin, and not till dessert was served did he think about what he had done.

But, when Molly came in with the pie, he remembered. Somehow, it didn't look quite so tempting.

There was that little guilty feeling tugging at his heart again, and then suddenly he started. What was mamma saying to Aunt Lizzie? Teddy could hardly believe his ears, and yet he had distinctly heard her say, "Teddy had a finger in this pie!" and everyone was looking at him and smiling, and O, how dreadful it was!

Teddy's face grew scarlet, and, sliding down from his chair, before anyone could speak, he ran out of the room and up the stairs to his own little room, where he hid his hot face in the cool pillow, wishing he might never have to take it out again.

How had she found out? Did mothers know everything? And then to tell it right before Aunt Lizzie and Dorothy? He felt that he could never look them in the face again.

When his mother came upstairs in search of him, she found a very much ashamed little boy, who, however, bravely told the whole story; and what do you suppose mamma did? Why, she laughed and laughed at first-she couldn't help it-and then she told him that it was his own little guilty conscience that had put such a meaning into her words, for that she had meant only that he had helped her to make the pie. And then, of course, she forgave him, as mothers always do when little boys are sorry.

THE TOWER OF RELIGIOUS PERFECTION

[After the lapse of thirty years to the very day-September 13, 1877 and 1907-there has come into our hands the autograph note of what Father Bridgett, C.SS.R. calls "An Exhortation for the Profession" of a Redemptoristine Nun in the Monastery of St. Alphonsus, Dublin. Some faithful readers whose acquaintance with this Magazine does not date from yesterday or the day before, are aware of the affectionate veneration that we cherish for the memory of this great and holy priest; and they will not be surprised that we are anxious to preserve every relic of his rich and beautiful mind.

To enlist the personal interest of some of our readers we will venture to reveal that the very religious family referred to by Father Bridgett in his opening words is that of the Rev. Michael Gavin, S.J., who has laboured for so many years in Farm Street, London. Father Bridgett's text was taken from the concluding verses of the fourteenth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, where our Divine Redeemer says that His disciple must hate father and mother and brethren and sisters and his own life; and then He asks, "Which of you having a mind to build a tower doth not first sit down and reckon on the charges that are necessary, whether he hath wherewithal to finish it?"]

T may, perhaps, seem strange, and even cruel, to quote these words, divine though they be, on an occasion like this when a mother, brother, and sister have hastened with loving hearts to share the sacrifice which is about to be offered to God in the oblation of one they love so dearly to the perpetual seclusion of the cloister. But I am not cruel. I know to whom I am speaking. They well understand that the hatred of which our Lord speaks is consistent with the tenderest love. She who bids adieu to mother, sisters, and brothers, and who may be said to hate them with a holy hatred, yet loves them so dearly that one of her greatest joys is that they have come to be present at her profession. And they whose natural love cannot but feel a pang in this ceremony, love her with so pure and high a love, that for her sake they rejoice in their very pain.

These are paradoxes indeed, yet they are the realities of faith. It is recounted to the glory of the mother of the seven youths whose martyrdom is written in the book of Maccabees, that she

not only did not refuse her sons to God, but she encouraged them to die for Him, in the hope of a future resurrection. This was a holy hatred of them, but it was the noblest and the tenderest love. A similar glory in the Christian Church belongs to St. Symphorosa, herself a martyr and the mother of seven martyrs.

And you, dear lady, have a similar grace, to be crowned, I trust, by a similar glory. Of the large family which God has given you, you have already sacrificed seven children, one son and six daughters, to the bloodless martyrdom of the religious lite. Though you yield to no mother in affection for your children, you would not wish to withdraw one of them from the holy state to which God has called them, nor diminish the perfect joy of your everlasting meeting in heaven, in order to increase the comfort of a few years on earth. I have not, therefore, shrunk from reminding you of this saying of Jesus Christ: "If any man come to Me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple."

He

Dear brethren, these words apply to us all, though not precisely in the same sense. God requires of some, as of the martyrs, to surrender the earthly society of their dear ones. requires of others, as of converts to the faith, to oppose the will, and sometimes to sacrifice the affection of their relatives. He requires of us all to be ready rather to renounce the company, or the interests, or the affection of parents, than to offend the honour and forfeit the love of our Creator and our Saviour. We must all have this readiness of the will, though God may never require the sacrifice in reality. But there are some whom He calls, as He has done her who is about to pronounce her solemn and final vows, to make a sacrifice of home, though the home is a happy and a holy one, to bid adieu to mother, brothers and sisters for a state of higher perfection than that even of a Christian family. Happy they when their relatives understand the call, and by encouraging them in it share its heroism and its merit.

It is this sublime vocation which our Divine Master is generally understood to signify by the metaphor of building a tower. The words may indeed be understood of the general life of all the disciples of Jesus Christ, but I shall endeavour to show you how peculiarly appropriate they are to the religious and contemplative life.

Metaphors taken from building are so common, both in Holy

* Father Bridgett's brothers followed him into the Church, but, alas! his good mother and sisters did not receive this grace -ED. I. M.

Scripture, and in ordinary language, that we speak of an edifying life (i.e., a life which edifies or builds up others) almost without being conscious of the metaphor. It is, therefore, easy to understand how the expression to build a tower, should mean to raise our life, or the life of others, to a high state of perfection. Now the religious state is that of those, not who profess to be perfect, far from it, but of those who, acknowledging their present misery, yet aim at perfection, or, as our Lord says, have a mind to build a tower.".

A tower has these three qualities amongst others :-(1) It rises above ordinary buildings; (2) it is an ornament to the city in the midst of which it rises; (3) it often serves as a defence to the city. So it is with the religious state. First, it rises or towers above other states of life. I am not, of course, comparing it with the priesthood, but with the married state, or the state of ordinary Christians engaged in the business of secular life. Our Lord Jesus Christ has enumerated its three great excellencies of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and His words are recorded in the 19th chapter of St. Matthew. In answer to the questions of His Apostles He admitted that the virginal state, embraced for the sake of the Kingdom of God, is better than the state of the married; and while saying that it is not imposed by God as a command, He asserts that it is a special gift of God, a gift offered indeed to all who are willing to receive it, though such a will is also a gift of God; and it is a gift which makes those who are faithful to it live already an angelic life on earth, delivered from the cares, the pleasures, and the servitudes of the married state, and free like the angels to do God's bidding and to contemplate His Majesty. When, then, we pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we pray implicitly that the virginal, the religious state may flourish in the Church of God.

Our Lord also praised the sublimity of the practice of poverty and obedience when He said to the young man: "If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all, and come and follow Me"-follow Me, that is, not as all My disciples must do by obedience to My commands, "but come follow Me" as My apostles do; come join yourselves to the little band which forms My bodyguard ; come and follow Me whithersoever I go; come and share My poverty, study My life, listen to My words; come imitate Me more minutely and more exactly, and take My desires and My good pleasure for the law of your life.

(2.) Such, dear brethren, is the religious state; but remember that if it rises higher than other states, it is not in order to throw them into the shade, but to adorn them, and defend them. A

well-built tower does not disfigure the church to which it is added; on the contrary, it makes it far more beautiful. So the virginal state does not cast a slur upon the married state, but it adorns it. Was not St. Agnes, whose name and memory are renewed by her who to-day makes her religious profession— was not St. Agnes the glory of her pious Christian parents, as the lily is the glory of the parent stem? Was not the Blessed Virgin Mary the glory of St. Joachim and St. Anne? So really Christian parents esteem it a joy and an honour when their son devotes himself to the priesthood, or their daughter to the religious state.

And as a virtuous and holy nun is the honour of a Christian family, so are the religious Orders the ornament of the Church of Christ. In the 44th Psalm the Church is compared to a virgin bride, but she is said to have a vesture of gold embroidered around with variety; and in the Apocalypse of St. John this bride is said to be the holy city. Yes; a city is adorned by variety. It is not a beautiful city where all houses are of the same exterior aspect, and of a uniform height, but when it is well laid out in streets, in squares, in market places, or in parks; when there are the modest dwellings of the poor, and the palaces of the rich, the warehouses of the merchant and the public buildings of the government. And nothing gives more beauty to a city than a multitude of towers. The towers themselves are not uniform; they are round or square, battlemented or crowned with spires; there is the turret of the convent chapel, the lofty tower of the town-hall, the massive bell-towers of the cathedral, or the watch-towers on the city wall. So is the Christian Church adorned with its religious Orders, some ancient, others modern; some higher than others; devoted to different purposes; but each beautiful in itself, and altogether forming a diadem of glory to the holy city, the bride of Christ.

In the third place, as towers have often served as a defence to a city, so do religious Orders defend the Church of God. In old days not only were cities surrounded by walls, and the walls protected at intervals by towers, but even the towers of churches were battlemented that they might serve for defence in case of need.

Yes, a religious community is a tower of refuge for those who dwell within it, and a tower of defence to those who remain without. I need not dwell on this, for though you can only guess the sweet sense of joy and security which makes the fervent nun sometimes even kiss the convent walls, yet you can easily understand how the absence of worldly temptation, and the exercises of a religious life make a convent indeed a tower of refuge to those who