and Death. At length no more prophets appeared; the time was now drawing near for the Birth of the Son of God.

Meanwhile, the Jewish people were led captives into a strange land, both in punishment of their repeated disobedience, and that the knowledge of God's promises of a Saviour might be more widely spread; but, when the Jews were humbled and repentant, God brought them back from thence, that the prophecies might be fulfilled regarding the Birth and Death of his Divine Son. All the great events which took place in the world about this time were also made to serve to the accomplishment of this sublime mystery,--the coming of the Son of God to save mankind. Empire succeeded empire, each doing its appointed task, until at last the whole world was united in one vast empire, that of Rome, ready for the coming of the Saviour and the preaching of the gospel. Then, and not till then, four thousand years after the promise made to Adam, was the great mystery accomplished; the Son of God took our human nature, and was born into the world to suffer and die for man.

THE VISION OF NABUCHODONOSOR.

Many hundred years before the coming of our Blessed Lord, Almighty God showed to Nabuchodonosor, King of Babylon, in a dream, how his own empire, and the empires which succeeded it, should go before and prepare the way for the establishment of that spiritual kingdom which his Divine Son was coming to found upon earth. Nabuchodonosor woke in the morning much terrified, and yet he could not recall to mind the dream which had filled him with alarm. He accordingly summoned all the wise men of his kingdom, and bade them, under pain of death, declare to him both the dream, which he had forgotten, and the interpretation or meaning of it. As they were unable to do so, he ordered them to be led to execution.

Hereupon, the prophet Daniel, inspired by Almighty God, went to the King, and, begging him to stay the execution,

declared himself ready to relate to him both the dream itself and its mysterious meaning.

"Thou, O King," said he, "didst begin to think, in thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter, and He that revealeth mysteries showed thee what shall come to pass.

"Thou sawest, and behold! there was, as it were, a great statue. The head of this statue was of fine gold, but the breast and the arms of silver, and the belly and the thighs of brass, and the legs of iron, the feet, part of iron and part of clay. Thus thou sawest, till a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands, and it struck the statue upon the feet thereof, and broke them in pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and they were carried away by the wind, and there was no place found for them; but the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. This is the dream: we will also tell the interpretation thereof.

Thou art a king of kings, and the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, and strength, and power, and glory. Thou, therefore, art the head of gold. And after thee shall rise up another kingdom, inferior to thee, of silver, and another third kingdom of brass. And the fourth kingdom shall be as iron. As iron breaketh into pieces and subdueth all things, so shall that break and destroy all these. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken. In the days of those kingdoms the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed; and it shall break in pieces, and shall consume all these kingdoms, and itself shall stand for ever. As thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and broke in pieces the clay, and the iron, and the brass, and the silver, and the gold."-Daniel, ii.

These four kingdoms, my dear children, are the four great empires which preceded the coming of Christ, and each of which performed the part marked out for it by Providence, in preparing the way before him. The great Babylonian Empire chastised the Jews for their idolatry, by leading them into the seventy years' captivity; the Persian Empire brought them back, humbled and penitent, into the land where the Son of God was to be born. The Grecian Empire spread the Holy Scriptures throughout the world,

that all mankind might be ready to receive and know where to look for their Redeemer. Finally the Roman Empire, by uniting the world into one vast nation, made the preaching of the gospel easy, at the same time that it fulfilled the prophecies which pointed out the place and time of our Saviour's Birth, and the circumstances of his cruel Passion and Death. But all this was but to prepare the way for the establishment of the spiritual kingdom of Christ, shown to the king of Babylon under the figure of a stone, cut from a mountain, but not by human hands, and filling the whole earth. Of this kingdom there shall be no end, for the Church of Christ, built on a rock, shall stand unshaken till the end of time, and shall continue to exist for all eternity in heaven.

SEVENTH INSTRUCTION.

His

Second Article-Continued. Jesus Christ. Incarnation and Office of Redeemer. His Holy

Name.

Q. What do you mean by His incarnation?

A. I mean His taking to Himself our human nature.

In the last lesson of the catechism, my dear children, you learnt that our Blessed Lord, though he has been always God, has not been always man, but only from the time of his Incarnation, that is, of his becoming man to redeem us. We now come to speak of his Incarnation, which is one of the most important doctrines of our holy religion. It is the third of those four great truths which I have spoken to you about on the two last Sundays, and which are some

times called the necessary truths, because it is probable that no one can be saved unless he both knows and believes them. The first of these truths is the Existence of One God, the second, the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity, and the third is that great mystery of Love, of which we are now going to speak, namely, the Incarnation of the Son of God.

The appointed time had now arrived when the promise of a Redeemer, made to our first parents after their fall and repeated at different times to the Holy Patriarchs and Prophets, was at length to be fulfilled; and, all things having been prepared for this great event, the Archangel St. Gabriel was sent from heaven to a humble maiden named Mary, of the tribe of Juda and family of David, to announce to her that she was chosen among all women to be the Mother of God made man. Mary having with deep humility accepted the sublime office, the Son of God, by a wonderful miracle, took flesh, that is to say, a human body, in her virginal womb, while his Heavenly Father, at the same moment, created an immortal soul, adorned with every grace, which our Blessed Lord took and made his own. Thus was the Son of God made man, or, in other words, took to himself our human nature, which, as the catechism says, is what we mean by the mystery of the Incarnation. It is from this great event, the greatest that has ever happened, that we now count or reckon time; so that when we speak of this being the year 1865, we mean that it is 1865 years since the Son of God became man to redeem us.

Now, I have a question to ask you; let me see if you can answer it. Jesus Christ has not been always man; but can you tell me is he man now, and, if so, will he always continue to be man? Most certainly; for though our Lord died on the cross, he raised his Blessed Body to life again on the

third day, and forty days after ascended into heaven, where he sits, and will for ever sit, at the right hand of his Heavenly Father. Jesus Christ is therefore ever present in heaven as man, seated in the midst of power and majesty; but is he present anywhere else, I mean with his human body and his human soul, for, as God, of course he is present everywhere? Yes, he is present as man in the Blessed Sacrament, concealed under the humble appearance of bread and wine. And where is the Blessed Sacrament? It is, you know, kept in the church upon the altar, shut up in what is called the tabernacle. There our Blessed Lord awaits us, inviting us to come and adore him, and ask him for whatever we stand in need of. And this it is which makes a Catholic church or chapel, however poor and humble, so holy and sacred, since it is the dwelling-place of Jesus Christ. Hence you are taught, whenever you enter the church, always to kneel and adore our Blessed Lord, and to behave with the greatest reverence while you remain, since you are in the immediate presence of the Son of God.

We should never forget, my dear children, often to thank our Blessed Lord for his Infinite Goodness

in becoming man to save us. It is for this purpose that we recite the Angelus morning, noon, and night; for the Angelus is, as it were, a little history of our Lord's Incarnation. In Catholic countries the church bell is always rung at the time of the Angelus, and all good Catholics, wherever they may be, in their houses, in the streets, or in the market places, immediately uncover themselves and say it. Often they go and kneel down before some way-side cross or image of our Blessed Lady, in order to recite it more devoutly. Let us also be faithful to this pious practice which is so Catholic, and to which many