e acts of faith in which they
recite these truths are far beyond their understanding. But they can
and do understand if we take pains to teach them that they are loved
by Our Lord each one alone, intimately and personally, and asked to
love in return. "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and
forbid them not," is not for them a distant echo of what was heard
long ago in the Holy Land, it is no story, but a living reality of to
day. They are themselves the children who are invited to come to Him,
better off indeed than those first called, since they are not now
rebuked or kept off by the Apostles but brought to the front and given
the first places, invited by order of His Vicar from their earliest
years to receive the Bread of Heaven, and giving delight to His
representatives on earth by accepting the invitation.

It is the reality as contrasted with the story that is the prerogative
of the Catholic child. Jesus and Mary are real, and are its own
closest kin, all but visible, at moments intensely felt as present.
They are there in joy and in trouble, when every one else fails in
understanding or looks displeased there is this refuge, there is this
love which always forgives, and sets things right, and to whom nothing
is unimportant or without interest. Companionship in loneliness,
comfort in trouble, relief in distress, endurance in pain are all to
be found in them. With Jesus and Mary what is there in the whole world
of which a Catholic child should be afraid. And this glorious strength
of theirs made perfect in child-martyrs in many ages will make them
again child-martyrs now if need be, or confessors of the holy faith as
they are not seldom called upon, even now, to show themselves.

There is a strange indomitable courage in children which has its deep
springs in these Divine things; the strength which they find in Holy
Communion and in their love for Jesus and Mary is enough to overcome
in them all weakness and fear.

6. Eight thoughts of the faith and practice of Christian life. And
here it is necessary to guard against what is childish, visionary, and
exuberant, against things that only feed the fancy or excite the
imagination, against practices which are adapted to other races than
ours, but with us are liable to become unreal and irreverent, against
too vivid sense impressions and especially against attaching too much
importance to them, against grotesque and puerile forms of piety,
which drag down the