a creature endowed with free will.

Of course there are those for whom all this is unmitigated twaddle and
bosh. To mention abnegation, sacrifice, etc., to such people is to
speak in a language no more intelligible than Sanskrit. Naturally one
of these will expect his children to appreciate the sacrifices he makes
for their happiness, but with God they think it must be different.

There was once a young man who was rich. He had never broken the
Commandments of God. Wondering if he had done enough to be saved, he
came to the Messiah and put the question to Him. The answer he received
was, that, if he were sinless, he had done well, but that there was a
sanctity, not negative but positive, which if he would acquire, would
betoken in him a charity becoming a follower of a Crucified God. Christ
called the young man to a life of perfection. "If thou wilt be perfect,
go, sell what thou hast, give to the poor, then come, and follow me."
It is not known whether this invitation was accepted by the young man;
but ever since then it has been the joy of men and women in the
Catholic Church to accept it, and to give up all in order to serve the
Maker.

Scoffers and revilers of monasticism are a necessary evil. Being given
the course of nature that sometimes runs to freaks, they must exist.
Living, they must talk, and talking they must utter ineptitudes. People
always do when they discourse on things they do not comprehend. But let
this be our consolation: monks are immortal. They were, they are, they
ever shall be. All else is grass.

CHAPTER XLI.
THE RELIGIOUS.

OWING to the disturbance over things religious in France, vows and
those who exemplify them in their lives are receiving of late a large
share of public attention. On this topic, it seems, every one is
qualified to speak; all sorts of opinions have been ventilated in the
religious, the non-religious, and the irreligious press, for the
benefit of those who are interested in this pitiful spasm of Gallic
madness against the Almighty and His Church. The measure of
unparalleled tyranny and injustice, in which antipathy to religious
orders has found expression, is being favorably and unfavorably
commented upon. But since monks, friars and nuns seldom find favor with
the non Catholic world, the general verdict is that the religious, like
the anarchist, must go; society is afraid of both and is safe from
neither.

To Catholics who understand human nature and have read h