I drink the nectar of the hour."

That wonderful test of seeing every event of life from the point of view
of the will of God simply transforms and revolutionizes the entire scale
of human experience. It simplifies all perplexities, it offers the
solution for all problems. It illuminates the small and the apparently
insignificant occurrences which, nevertheless, contrive to play so large
and often so determining a part in our days, as well as places in high
relief the great questions that beset one in his varied round.

The little book from which the extract on the preceding page is taken--a
Catholic book of devotion--is one of the most illuminating in all
spiritual literature. It offers to one instruction and guidance in that
life which alone is progress, peace, and joy,--and one who comes to use
it daily will place it almost next to the Bible in its practical and
almost miraculous helpfulness. Catholic or Protestant,--what matters it
so that one who listens may hear the word? It is in no wise necessary to
embrace Catholicism in order to concede that some of the most vital
literature of the spiritual life is written by the priests and thinkers
of that communion; and it is good to take help wherever one can find
it,--regardless of sect or creed.

A French priest, preaching in an impassioned and sublime abandon of
enthusiasm; caught up in a rapture of the heavenly life, poured out
these wonderful words to audiences that thronged the dim shades of Saint
Sulpice, in Paris. His theme was the consecration of life to the divine
will. He called upon all humanity to recognize that this divine will is
revealed,--not exclusively in the cloister or the silence, but in the
common trend of daily life. "The field is the world." "All things," said
this priest, "may further the soul's union with God; all things perfect
it, save sin, and that which is contrary to duty;" and he added: "When
God thus gives Himself to a soul, all that is ordinary becomes
extraordinary; therefore it is that nothing appears of the great work
which is going on in the soul; the way itself is so marvellous that it
needs not the embellishment of marvels which belong not to it. It is a
miracle, a revelation, a continuous enjoyment of God, interrupted only
by little faults; but in itself it is characterized by the absence of
anything remarkable, while it renders marvellous all ordinary and
sensible things."

The entire discourse was a fervent and illuminati