the increase of the suffrages of the faithful around us, never forgetting that each may spread the faith around him like a halo of light, provided that each remember that it behoves himself to be the focus whence these rays proceed.

With this view, while we may occasionally pass our hopes and wants under a general review, it is well to concentrate our attention on such as are more strictly to be considered local and individual. Not that they are necessarily so; for the Catholic principle is such as allows of no such distinction, seeing that the troubles, for instance, of the Spanish, Russo-Greek, and Brazilian Churches are as much a subject of sorrow and regret to us, as the militant state of the faith and the trusty martyrs of China or Cochin are an object of interest, sympathy, and gratitude, or as the healthy state of the Gallican or American Churches are subjects of congratulation and thankful praise. It matters little in what quarter of the globe the Church suffers or is exalted, the good Catholic sympathises with both-he weeps with the confessor or the martyr, "he rejoices with those that rejoice." As St. Paul hath said, we are all members of one body," and surely all who are fed with the bread of love, need no other motive for fellowship, no better inducement to join the one Catholic confraternity, which was, as it were, first instituted in the canticle of the angels;-Gloria in excelsis Deo: et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis.

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With this object in view, we purpose, in this and in succeeding papers, to bring local wants before the notice of our readers, with a view of promoting the best in our power, wants which may have been long felt, and of kindling or exciting hopes which may have long been smouldering in secret in the breast of many. We would not depress the general hope which is now so general among us, by occasionally Jaying bare what may often have been unintentionally exaggerated, more because we would wish it so, than because it is indeed hopeful: but as it is safer to look danger, when one is put to it, boldly in the face, so where our wants are palpable, our means and numbers small, or other causes unfavourable, perhaps more good might be predicated by lifting the half-delusive veil, which we have occasionally thrown over our poverty and actual state, than by continuing to buoy ourselves up by a delusive vanity. In a word, having the one end in view, of the conversion of our country and the increase of the faith among us, we are anxious not only to increase our hopes, where we have good grounds to rejoice therein, but also to put others on their metal who

may have their zeal increased by the difficulties which a stout heart is always ready to encounter.

When we look on the wondrous fruits that have come to man, since the promulgation of the Catholic faith; we ought to lift up our hearts in gratitude to the good God, who so liberally hath bestowed on us so wondrous a gift. Born and bred in the faith, and accustomed to it and to its fruits, as household things, the mind gets used to the precious deposit, and perhaps forgets that the innumerable blessings of civilized society are owing solely to its supernatural agency. We forget that slavery has been abolished, not by a bold and reckless experiment, but in a course of centuries in which the minds of men were led to its dissuetude. Previous to civil liberty, the sanctity of the married and the virginal states softened the hearts of men; and of tyrants, made them the helpmates and friends of "the devout sex," which from bondage and degradation was raised, by the Church, to a state of intellectual superiority and respectful deference, springing from HER, who, as the type of exalted virginity—from the humble handmaid of the Lord, sits now enthroned in her cope of sovereignty over the whole court of Heaven. "It is a wondrous and unheard-of thing," says St. John Chrysostom, "that man should ever be taught that poverty was blessed." But this doctrine is peculiarly that of the Church; and from this sprang all that tender and affectionate devotion to the poor which, from the earliest times, we meet with in the wide range of ecclesiastical history. Thus, as heresies passed away and persecutions, her institutions for the relief of the poor, who could return her no reward on earth, were ever on the increase; hospitals were unknown to man, till the Church, in her aurelia state gave them existence, and why? because till she, in the plenitude of the holy spirit, had spoken, man in his degraded state was ignorant that poverty was blessed.

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The Catholics of this country, whose energies are but now awakening from long and persevering depression, have hitherto been more called on to maintain the open exercise of their religion, by diverting their attention to the building of churches and founding of schools, than to the sublime works of founding and endowing hospitals for the relief of the poor: but with a view to farther zeal, we would remind them that

* The religion which succeeded the Catholic faith in this country, has been now nearly three hundred years dominant in these islands, and yet, till last summer, there had been no such thing established as an hospital for incureables. Dr. W. Alison, of Edinburgh, an Anglican physician of exemplary charity,has the merit of being the first to establish a private institution for the relief of those sadly

there is not a charitable institution founded, or being founded, by our unhappy dissenting brethren, but what owes its origin, in principle (how different, alas! in practice), to the Catholic faith. To it alone is every variation of this charitable principle wholly due, passing through every variety of tenderness to the poor, the unhappy, or the miserable, which the fertile charity of the faithful has so widely and numerously produced.

We do not purpose to pursue this subject at present, having ample occasion to do so at a future period, when we shall have occasion to enter into cases of particular charity, or to call attention to the comparatively few institutions which we yet have amongst us; but we would have the general principle borne in mind, that while the Catholic faith is, as it were, infinitely comprehensive, it acquires this extension, by the multiplication of individual acts,-in other words, it proves its faith by its practice, while at the same time, its practice returns honour to its faith. As in man there is diversity of disposition, habit, feeling, and sentiment, so the influence of the Church exerts in him a like diversity, which, though resulting from the same, yet all spring from the like motive, which is the faith. She gives enough to satisfy all men, and the same divine food that fills the heart of the humble and unlearned, satisfies the exalted and surpassing intellect of a St. Augustine or a St. Thomas of Aquinum. "Truly may it be said that the King's daughter is all beautiful within, and girded about with varieties," for in her courts there is food for all, and none shall go empty away.

In reviewing our particular case, and bearing these premises before us, we will do well to consider our actual state. In England and Scotland, notwithstanding all our hopes, and boasting, and growing increase, we are as yet but a section-a small and poor section—just emerging from a fettered state, and like a bird escaped from the fowler, pluming our feathers in the sun, preparatory to a noble flight; we are still weak and timid; the memory of the past is not yet gone; we are like one that awakes from a sleeping draught-we slept in pain-and awake from our deep sleep, half doubtful that our weary aches are gone, and fearful of its return, as consciousness grows apace. Our temples are few and far between; our congregations are poor; but if disunion

afflicted of Christ's poor. May God reward him for it! In London there is no such hospital. The reader need not be reminded, that in Catholic countries such institutions are frequent, as he will readily recall numerous instances of heroic devotion, that have been practised by the faithful in those asylums of Christ's suffering flock.

still show itself amongst us, it is the galling of the old chain; the Catholic principle owns no such disorganisation, and if we would suc. ceed and make a healthy advance, we can only do so by abandoning all leaven of self, and clinging to the faith alone.

We are as yet a section-a small and poor section-but was it not with such elements that the mighty fabric of imperial Rome, with all the vain superstition of a complex and sensual paganism, or a more complicated philosophy, was overthrown, and the lowly Cross became the fairest ornament of the imperial dignity. They had much to do, and we also have much before us; they overcame in the fires of persecution, and we must work in the fire of devotion; if we would see the like results. It will not do to sit idle; we must one and all aid the good cause. There is not one amongst us, however small or mean, who may not, by his good life, advance the knowledge and respect for our holy faith; and perhaps at no period of the history of the Church is this so needful as now, when, from so many concurrent causes, the eyes of so many who have awoke to a feeling of Catholic reverence, are directed towards us, with a searching and wishful gaze.

We are too timid,—it may have suited us once, it suits us now no longer. In controversial arguments the course is changed; it is now no longer necessary to follow the line which has been till lately pursued; we had then to fight every inch of ground; every one of our doctrines, usages, and discipline had to be separately propounded, and proved step by step. In our controversial treatises we had to meet time after time the often repeated and as often confuted calumnies or arguments, as they might chance to be; the steps of the controversialist were ever travelling over the same trite road, varied only by the talents of the individual, or the aptness of the occasion, that required their application. It is not so now; thanks to the theologians of Oxford, we have but to refer to them, and to their numerous and increasing followers, who are even more ready than their masters to grant, as postulates, what we had before to prove by a regular process of deduction. Our liturgy and its venerable usages, invocation of saints, purgatory, the councils, confession, absolution, veneration of the blessed Virgin Mary, the mysteries of the eucharist, the authority of the Church, the abandonment of the Protestant principle, the virtual acknowledgment of the use of a venerable language in our public office, and the abandonment of that doctrine, unheard of till the 16th century, justification by faith alone,—all these are now granted, and with a great and a growing majority controversy is reduced to a narrow space, so that we have little more to do than

to give a right turn to the conclusions drawn from their own premises, and by pressing on them with their own weapons, oblige them to acknowledge that they must be in a delusion, so long as they halt in their advance, or linger out of the pale of a Church that must be one, and out of which it is wholly impossible to reconcile the faith and practice with the judgment, the heart, and the intellect. Thus we are placed in a position where all that is required is to bring us into the light of day, that others seeing our good works may glorify our Father who is in heaven, and from our example may derive new desire to come within the walls of "the only one." All we require to show, in whatever state we may be, is that we individually, whether high or low, live up to our faith. Example is more powerful than precept; the precept being granted, all that is required is the example. We require to throw off our timidity, to he more bold, whereby we mean more open in our profession and practice of our faith, and by every means in our power endeavour to increase the facilities of doing so.

Thus recent events have shown that the more open our temples and solemn rites have been, the more full have the fruits been that sprang from our boldness. There was a time when an over-prudent caution would have discountenanced the glories which in the course of the last summer were thrown over religion, at Birmingham and elsewhere. And many have hung back from joining the holy guilds, doubtless from a well-meaning fear of obtruding our solemn rites on the gaze of men who might misinterpret so unusual a bearing. But what has been the result? in every instance where public processions and solemn offices have taken place, the effect on the beholders has been much to the honour and increase of the Catholic faith. Men long for true religion; they have too long seen it represented before them as a system of philosophy, which was to be retained, independent and irrespective of human motives, namely the heart, intellect and senses of man. They knew not that there is not a sentiment in the constitution of man, that may not and must not be subservient to the great cause of religion, that calls not to his aid, to give expression to his worship of God, all that is fairest and best of his gifts. That whether it be in the majesty of the great arts of architecture, painting, and sculpture, in the sweet sounds of instruments of every string or tone, of the human voice, or in the simple offerings of sweet scented flowers, there is none so humble but that he may bring wherewithal to give expression to the adoration, which is due to his great and loving Creator. For the Church hath taught him, that as by the senses sin came in,