the very head of
the line. And the complaints seem natural enough. _Thou hast made them
equal unto us who have borne the burden and heat of the day_.

Yet look again, you Elder Sons. Have your religious, careful, timid
lives ever exhibited anything resembling that depth of self-abjection to
which the Younger Son has attained? Certainly you have been virtuous and
conscientious; after all, it would be a shame if you had not been so,
considering the wealth of grace you have always enjoyed. But have you
ever even striven seriously after the one single moral quality which
Christ holds up in His own character as the point of imitation: _Learn
of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart_? It is surely significant that
He does not say, expressly, Learn of Me to be pure, or courageous, or
fervent; but _Learn to be humble_, for in this, above all, you shall
_find rest to your souls_. Instead, have you not had a kind of gentle
pride in your religion or your virtue or your fastidiousness? In a
word, you have not been as excellent an Elder Son as your brother has
been a Younger. You have not corresponded with your graces as he has
corresponded with his. You have never yet been capable of sufficient
lowliness to come home (which is so much harder than to remain there),
or of sufficient humility to begin for the first time to work with all
your heart only an hour before sunset.

Begin, then, at the beginning, not half-way up the line. Go down to the
church door and beat your breast and say not, God reward me who have
done so much for Him, but _God be merciful to me_ who have done so
little. Get off your seat amongst the Pharisees and go down on your
knees and weep behind Christ's couch, if perhaps He may at last say to
you, _Friend, come up higher_.

THE THIRD WORD

_Woman, behold thy son. Behold thy mother_.

Our Divine Lord now turns, from the soul who at one bound has sprung
into the front rank, to those two souls who have never left it, and
supremely to that Mother on whose soul sin has never yet breathed, on
whose breast Incarnate God had rested as inviolate and secure as on the
Bosom of the Eternal Father, that Mother who was His Heaven on earth.
Standing beside her is the one human being who is least unworthy to be
there, now that Joseph has passed to his reward and John the Baptist has
gone to join the Prophets--_the disciple whom Jesus loved_, who had lain
on the breast of Jesus as Jesus had lain on the breast of Ma