In clear sweet tones: "_Benedicat tibi
Convertat vultum suum ad te et
Det Pacem!_" Hushed and holy silence breathes
About the wanderer who lifts his heart
To catch the echo of that voice of love.

CELIA RICHMOND.

The mystic pilgrimage to Assisi, the "Seraphic City," prefigures itself
almost as a journey to the Mount of Vision. "Any line of truth that
leads us above materialism," says Dr. Wilberforce, Venerable Archdeacon
of Westminster Abbey, "that forces us to think, that encourages the
imagination to pierce the world's cobwebs, that forces us to remember
that we are enwrapped by the supernatural, is helpful and stimulating. A
human life lived only in the seen and felt, with no sense of the
invisible, is a fatally impoverished life, a poor, blind, wingless life,
but to believe that ever around us is a whole world full of spiritual
beings; that this life, with its burdens, is but the shadow which
precedes the reality; that here we are but God's children at school, is
an invigorating conviction, full of hope, productive of patience and
fruitful in self-control."

To an age imprisoned in the fear of God the "sweet saint," Francis,
brought the message of the love of God. To an age crushed under the
abuses of religion as an organization of feudal bishops and
ecclesiastics, St. Francis brought the message of hope and of joy. He
revealed to his age the absolute reality of the spiritual world that
surrounds us. He was born into a time when there existed on the one
hand, poverty and misery; on the other, selfish and debasing
self-indulgence of wealth and its corresponding oppression of the poor.
The Church itself was a power for conquest and greed. Its kingdom was of
this world. St. Bernard and others had nobly aimed to effect a reform
and had illustrated by their own lives the beautiful example of
simplicity and unselfishness, but their work failed in effectiveness
and permanent impress.

"Oh, beauty of holiness!
Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness."

Not only in beauty, but in power does it stand. St. Francis brought to
the sad and problematic conditions of his time that resistless energy of
infinite patience, of a self-control based on insight into the divine
relationships of life, and of unfailing fidelity to his high purpose.
Through good report or through evil report he kept the faith, and
pressed onward to the high calling of God. The twelfth and the
thirteenth