ing on earth can bring. For it says to him--God does understand thee
utterly. For Christ understands thee. Christ feels for thee. Christ
feels with thee. Christ has suffered for thee, and suffered with thee.
Thou canst go through nothing which Christ has not gone through. He, the
Son of God, endured poverty, fear, shame, agony, death for thee, that He
might be touched with the feeling of thine infirmity, and help thee to
endure, and bring thee safe through all to victory and peace.

But again, Passion-week, and above all Good Friday, is a good time,
because it teaches us, above all days, what it is to be good, and what
goodness means. Therefore remember this, all of you, and take it home
with you for the year to come. He who has learnt the lesson of Passion-
week, and practises it; he and he only is a good man.

Nay more, Passion-week tells us, I believe, what is the law according to
which the whole world of man and of things, yea, the whole universe, sun,
moon, and stars, is made: and that is, the law of self-sacrifice; that
nothing lives merely for itself; that each thing is ordained by God to
help the things around it, even at its own expense. That is a hard
saying: and yet it must be true. The soundest Theology and the highest
Reason tell us that it must be so. For there cannot be two Holy Spirits.
Now the Spirit by which the Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed himself upon the
Cross is The Holy Spirit. And the Spirit by which the Lord Jesus Christ
made all worlds is The Holy Spirit. But the spirit by which He
sacrificed Himself on the Cross is the spirit of self-sacrifice. And
therefore the spirit by which He made the world is the spirit of self-
sacrifice likewise; and self-sacrifice is the law and rule on which the
universe is founded. At least, that is the true Catholic faith, as far
as my poor intellect can conceive it; and in that faith I will live and
die.

There are those who, now-a-days, will laugh at such a notion, and
say--Self-sacrifice? It is not self-sacrifice which keeps the world
going among men, or animals, or even the plants under our feet: but
selfishness. Competition, they say, is the law of the universe.
Everything has to take care of itself, fight for itself, compete freely
and pitilessly with everything round it, till the weak are killed off,
and only the strong survive; and so, out of the free play of the self-
interest of each, you get the greatest possible happiness of the greate