original impurity might infect the substance which He assumed; and being
Himself sinless, He showed, in the nature of his person, after his
resurrection, what the material body would have been in all of us except
for sin, and what it will be when, after feeding on it in its purity,
the bodies of each of us are transfigured after its likeness. Here was
the secret of the spirit which set St. Simeon on his pillar and sent St.
Anthony to the tombs--of the night watches, the weary fasts, the
penitential scourgings, the life-long austerities which have been
alternately the glory and the reproach of the mediaeval saints. They
desired to overcome their animal bodies, and anticipate in life the work
of death in uniting themselves more completely to Christ by the
destruction of the flesh, which lay as a veil between themselves and
Him.

Such I believe to have been the central idea of the beautiful creed
which, for 1,500 years, tuned the heart and formed the mind of the
noblest of mankind. From this centre it radiated out and spread, as time
went on, into the full circle of human activity, flinging its own
philosophy and its own peculiar grace over the common details of the
common life of all of us. Like the seven lamps before the Throne of God,
the seven mighty angels, and the seven stars, the seven sacraments shed
over mankind a never-ceasing stream of blessed influences. The priests,
a holy order set apart and endowed with mysterious power, represented
Christ and administered his gifts. Christ, in his twelfth year, was
presented in the Temple, and first entered on his Father's business; and
the baptised child, when it has grown to an age to become conscious of
its vow and of its privilege, again renews it in full knowledge of what
it undertakes, and receives again sacramentally a fresh gift of grace to
assist it forward on its way. In maturity it seeks a companion to share
its pains and pleasures; and, again, Christ is present to consecrate the
union. Marriage, which, outside the Church, only serves to perpetuate
the curse and bring fresh inheritors of misery into the world, He made
holy by his presence at Cana, and chose it as the symbol to represent
his own mystic union with his Church. Even saints cannot live without at
times some spot adhering to them. The atmosphere in which we breathe and
move is soiled, and Christ has anticipated our wants. Christ did penance
forty days in the wilderness, not to subdue his own flesh--for