to himself, since by knowing what holiness is, he is also enlightened to know what guilt is."

But he warned his hearers against that sham humility which fosters vanity by means of what is most opposed to all vanity and all pride. "We know many," he says, "who without being accused by any one, confess that they are sinners; but if they are censured by others on account of a fault, seek to justify themselves, that they may not appear as sinners. If such persons, when they voluntarily say it, acknowledged with real humility that they are sinners, they would not, when censured by others, deny that they are what they have voluntarily confessed themselves to be." Speaking of the nature of self-denial, he says: "Is it not enough that we renounce our property, although we do not renounce ourselves? Why must we come out of ourselves? We must renounce ourselves in that which we have made ourselves through sin, and keep ourselves in that which we have become through grace.' In reference to the same subject he says elsewhere: "The more holiness daily grows in us through God's Spirit, the more our own spirit lessens. For we attain the perfection of growth in God when we renounce ourselves entirely."

Gregory always spoke against the externalizing and isolating of virtues and good works, and pointed out, that a close connection exists between every kind of real goodness, and that love is the soul of all goodness, apart from which it has no value. "Chastity," he says, "abstinence, distribution of earthly goods among the poor, are nothing without love. Satan very much dreads the true humble love which we show towards one another; he grudges us our union, for we thus maintain that which he could not himself hold fast. Evil spirits fear the flock of the elect if they are bound to one another by the harmony of love. But the value of harmony appears from this, that without it the other virtues are no virtues." "In order," he says, "that a person should show compassion to the needy in a right manner, two things are requisite; the man who gives, and the thing which is given. But the man is of incomparably greater value than the thing. Whoever, therefore, communicates of his earthly substance to his destitute neighbour, but does not guard his own life from evil, gives God his property but gives himself to sin.

INEQUALITY IN THE CHURCH DESIRABLE.

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He presents what is of least value to his Creator, and that which is of greater value he retains for the Evil One. Only that is a genuine sacrifice to God, when the branches of devotion proceed from the root of righteousness." He marks love as the equalizing principle for all the distinction of gifts among men as bodily and spiritual, since, by means of it, a gift peculiar to the individual becomes common property. In speaking of those diversified gifts among the apostles which were designed to supplement one another, he says: "The Almighty has acted with the souls of men as he has with the different countries of the earth. He might have given fruits of all kinds to every land; but if every land did not require the fruits of another, there would be no fellowship maintained with the others. Hence it comes to pass, that to one he gives a superfluity of wine, to another of oil, to another of cattle, to another of the fruits of the field, so that, since one gives what the other has not, and the latter supplies what the former wants, the separated lands are united by a communication of gifts. And like different countries, the souls of saints are related to one another; by reciprocally communicating what has been imparted to them, as different countries share with one another their respective productions, they are all united together in one love." Thus Gregory points out how the inequality and diversity among men is necessary and ordained by God; that to wish to make all things externally equal would be a mutilation of nature, and a destruction of divine arrangement; but that the love that proceeds from the gospel equalizes all from within, as all the inequalities founded in nature, or springing out of the relations of life, ought to be materials for the expression and preservation of love. Of true prayer, he remarks: "We see, my dear brethren, in what numbers you are assembled at this feast; how you bow Jour knees, strike upon your breasts, utter words of prayer and confession, and moisten your faces with tears. But, I beseech you, consider the quality of your prayers: see to it whether you pray in the name of Jesus, that is, whether you desire the joys of everlasting blessedness; for you do not seek Jesus in the house of Jesus, when in the temple of eternity you pray for temporal things without reserve. One prays for a wife, another for an estate, another for a livelihood. It is allowable, indeed, to pray for such objects to the Almighty if we need

them, but we must, at the same time, remember what our Saviour has enjoined, 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you.' And in another place he says: "True prayer consists not in the words of the lips, but in the feelings of the heart, for not our words, but our desires, fall upon the secret ear of God as the most powerful sound. If we pray for eternal life with our lips, but do not desire it with our hearts, our calling is only a silence. But if we desire with the fulness of our hearts, then our very silence is a calling upon God. The hidden cry is therefore in the inward parts, in the longing of the heart which does not reach the human ear, and yet fills the ear of the Creator." Of the influence of the Holy Spirit on the human mind he says: “The breath of the Holy Spirit elevates the human soul when it touches it, and suppresses earthly thoughts, and inflames the soul with longings after the eternal; so that it rejoices in nothing so much as in things above, and despises what comes from the earth and from human corruption. To understand the hidden word is to receive the word of the Holy Spirit into the heart. This word only he can know who has it. It is felt, but cannot express itself in words." Of the various ways in which the Holy Spirit draws men to himself, and how he trains them, Gregory says: God sometimes awakens us by love, sometimes by fears, to repentance. Sometimes he shows us the nothingness of the present, and directs our desires to the love of the eternal; sometimes he begins with revealing the eternal, that then the temporal may be exposed in all its nothingness. Sometimes ne places our own wickedness full in view, and thus softens our hearts to feel pain for the wickedness of others. Sometimes he presents the wickedness of others to our view, and by thus leading us to repentance, delivers us, in a wonderful way, from our own wickedness.

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A man who understood so well the manner in which Christianity was designed to operate on the human heart, must have acknowledged that man, in order to lead his brethren to salvation, can do no more than by word and conduct bring this inward divine power near their hearts; that the work which the Lord reserves to himself alone to accomplish, cannot be coerced by human mechanism or human power. And we find in his writings many beautiful expressions relating to

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this subject, although, carried forward by a zeal not sufficiently regulated, he did not always act in accordance with the principles here laid down. He declared himself strongly against those blind zealots who compelled the Jews in Italy to receive baptism, or wished to obstruct them in the free exercise of their religion. To a bishop of Naples he writes: "Those persons who with upright intentions attempt to lead unbelievers to the true faith, must endeavour to act with kindness not with rudeness, that the souls which might be won by a full development of Christian truth, may not be driven farther off by hostile feelings. Those who act otherwise, and under this pretext would hinder them from the exercise of their own religion, show that they seek rather to advance their own interests than the cause of God. Why should we prescribe rules for the Jews how they are to conduct their worship, if we cannot gain them thereby? We must therefore strive to attract them more by rational conviction and gentleness, to join us, and not to flee from us, that when we prove what we say, from their own sacred writings, we may, by God's grace, convert them." And to a bishop of Tarragona, he writes: We must seek to lead those who are far from Christianity by gentleness and mildness, by exhortation and conversation, to the faith; in order that those who cannot be drawn to the faith by the gentle power of preaching, may not be repelled by threatenings and terror,'

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CHAPTER V.

CHRISTIANITY IN POVERTY AND SICKNESS.

THE influence of Christianity is shown not less in little things than in great. It requires no great and conspicuous theatre, in order to manifest itself. It is the light which, wherever it may be, cannot be hid under a bushel. What Christianity really is, appears most evidently in its filling vessels that are insignificant and contemptible in human eyes, with a heavenly glory which infinitely outshines all earthly glory,

since it pours into them the powers of the world to come, compared with which all the powers of earth are nothing. In all ages the glorious declaration of the apostle in 1 Cor. i. 27, has been amply verified in the operations of the gospel: "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and base things of the world, and things which are despised, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are." A great part of these effects of the gospel always remains hidden from the eyes of the majority of men, and hence finds no place in the pages of history. So much the more foolish it is to wish to judge of the effects of Christianity in any age from what appears on the surface: and so much more is it the duty of an historical observer, to search in every direction for these rays of light scattered through the darkness, and next to the man whom the Lord had placed in so exalted a position, and intrusted with so great and varied a field of labour, to notice a man who, in the lowest worldly station, in the most needy and helpless lot, manifested the glory of a divine life. We should have known nothing of the life of this child of God, if that great bishop had suffered himself to be deceived like the world, by appearances, so as to be enabled to discern this treasure in an earthen vessel. Let us listen to him while he describes the life of this individual: "In the vault through which persons pass to the church of Clement, was a certain man named Servulus, whom many of you knew, as I knew him, poor in earthly goods, rich towards God, who had been worn out by long illness; for from childhood to the end of life he was lame in all his limbs. Do I say that he could not stand? He could not even sit upright in his bed, nor raise his hand to his mouth, nor turn himself from one side to the other. His mother and brother were always with him to wait upon him, and whatever he received in alms he distributed with his own hands to the poor. He could not read, but he had purchased a Bible; he received all pious men as his guests who read to him constantly out of the Bible. And thus, without being able to read, he became acquainted with the whole Bible. Amidst all his pains he endeavoured to thank God, and to spend day and night in praising him. When he felt himself near death he begged his visitors to