Finally, of this, my brethren, let us be sure, that no one mends his condition by seeking unity and discipline in any other branch of the Catholic Church, than that in which he has received spiritual birth. We have possessions, birthrights, privileges of GOD. Let us not, in a moment of darkness and trial, judge ourselves bound to forego them, in the thought of gaining greater. The probabilities that we are right in staying there where GOD has placed us, are infinite; while awful is the responsibility which devolves upon those who seek a change.

Where now on the earth shall we find unity? It is a blessing from which even the Romanist, the greatest pretender in this kind, must feel himself excluded. For hardly can a thoughtful, religious Romanist cast his eye towards the millions of the Eastern Church in separation from Rome and yet believe them, by the decree of God, severed from the Church of CHRIST.' What is the fact, but that all Christendom is disunited, all Christendom under a dark cloud? It should be our wisdom not to shut our eyes to this undeniable truth that God does now suffer disunion in the Christian family. It is a time of awful suspense, not of abrupt and precipitate change. What the Almighty is preparing to bring out of the womb "of this death" we may not know. All is dark as the tomb of CHRIST on the eve of His crucifixion; but there is no room for despondent 1 See Appendix.

hearts. Each man should be at his post, in his own proper appointed vocation, watching with Mary against the time the LORD shall rise, it may be, to re-organize His Church.

Of this, at least, let us be warned, that as one institution of Divine origin, the temple of CHRIST'S body, the germ of His Church, once wore the semblance of decay and death, the cold aspect of the repulsive tomb and the stone rolled before it; and yet contained the essence, nay the LORD of all life, we are not with unseemly haste to despise and forsake anything which, once lovely and flourishing, GOD may, in His inscrutable wisdom, have suffered to fall into the declinings of a lower estate.

SERMON XI.

S. MARY MAGDALENE LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR CHRIST.

S. MATT. xxviii. 1.

MARY MAGDALENE AND THE OTHER MARY.

Ir cannot be without design that, whereas this "other Mary" is, in the Gospels, often mentioned in connection with Mary Magdalene, she is never spoken of apart from her. S. Matthew' tells us that among the many women, who beheld the Crucifixion afar off, was Mary Magdalene and "Mary the mother of James and Joses:" and twice afterwards, speaking of her familiarly as the "other Mary," he repeats the same order. "And there was Mary Magdalene and the other Mary sitting over against the sepulchre." And still further on occurs the passage from which our text is taken: "In the end of the Sabbath came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre." In the same way S. Mark sets them together, as, at the Crucifixion; then

'S. Matt. xxvii. 60.

2 S. Mark xv. 40.

again, as together beholding the sepulchre; and further, as going together to buy sweet spices.' S. Luke slightly differs from the others, but only in the order of precedence. "It was Mary Magdalene,' he says, "and Joanna and Mary the mother of James, and other women which told these things unto the Apostles." He wrote as a stranger to the parties, and we may therefore suppose, in enumerating them, preferred the rich wife of Chuza before the humbler mother of James and Joses; whereas the other Evangelists, who had often seen the friends together, could not so easily separate them in their thoughts. In the writings then of these three Evangelists, we thus observe that Magdalene is always set first. We may remark, however, that S. John, in the only place where he names them together, departs from this order. For, we must remember, that he had to introduce, in his enumeration, a person of far more eminent dignity. "Now there stood by the Cross of JESUS, His Mother, and His Mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene." Here we see that Magdalene gives place to her friend, as being herself not so nearly related to the blessed Virgin.

Thus we seem called upon to remark that the Evangelists have been directed by the HOLY GHOST to record two singular facts; doubtless that from them we might derive some important lesson for meditation and reflection. First by giving the pre

1 S. Mark xv. 47; xvi. 1.

cedence to Mary Magdalene over the other women, in so marked a manner, they show that she was accounted foremost of all the women who ministered to CHRIST. They mark in her a precedence which would seem to have amounted, among the holy women who ministered to the wants of our Blessed LORD, to a kind of recognized leadership,-a right to direct their movements, if not by the actual and formal consent of their little body, yet by the consciousness that she possessed a certain superiority of mind and spirit. Take the following for an instance. In the morning of the Resurrection, as they went to the tomb they said among themselves, "Who shall roll away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?" Now, is it very likely that they should never have thought before this time, when now they were far advanced on their journey, that the stone must be moved from the tomb, and that their strength was unequal to the task? They had accurately noted the stone, as it lay in the mouth of the tomb, before they went to buy sweet spices on the preceding eve:' and, before they made their preparation on the eve after the Crucifixion, they would certainly have canvassed the whole difficulty. This was not the first time, then, that they had considered the point. Why, then, had they not provided against it ? And here I do not see how well we are to understand their conduct and their words, save by supposing that a peculiar influence was exercised

1 S. Mark xvi. 1; S. Luke xxiii. 56.