, courage, thoroughness, all the
harder qualities that serve as a backbone, we, at least, make others
want them also, and strive for them by the power of example that is
not set as deliberate good example, for that is as tame as a precept,
but the example of the life that is lived, and the truths that are
honestly believed in.

The gentler qualities which are to adorn the harder virtues may be
more explicitly taught. It is always more easy to tone down than to
brace up; there must fist be something to moderate, before moderation
can be a virtue; there must be strength before gentleness can be
taught, as there must be some hardness in material things to make them
capable of polish. And these are qualities which are specially needed
in our unsteady times, when rapid emancipation of unknown forces makes
each one more personally responsible than in the past. It is an
impatient age: we must learn patience; it is an age of sudden social
changes: we have to make ready for adversity; it is an age of
lawlessness: each one must stand upon his own guard and be his own
defence; it is a selfish age, and never was unselfishness more
urgently needed; love of home and love of country seem to be cooling,
one as rapidly as the other: never was it more necessary to learn the
spirit of self-sacrifice both for family life and the love and honour
due to one's country which is also "piety" in its true sense.

All these things come with our Catholic faith and practice if it is
rightly understood. Catholic family life, Catholic citizenship,
Catholic patriotism are the truest, the only really true, because the
only types of these virtues that are founded on truth. But they do not
come of themselves. Many will let themselves be carried to heaven, as
they hope, in the long-suffering arms of the Church without either
defending or adorning her by their virtues, and we shall but add to
their number if we do not kindle in the minds of children the ambition
to do something more, to devote themselves to the great Cause, by
self-sacrifice to be in some sort initiated into its spirit, and
identified with it, and thus to make it worth while for others as well
as for themselves that they have lived their life on earth. There is a
price to be paid for this, and they must face it; a good life cannot
be a soft life, and a great deal, even of innocent pleasure, has to be
given up, voluntarily, to make life worth living, if it were only as a
training in _doing