hurch Militant, and its citizens are not only the citizens of
the Church here below, but--we believe in the Communion of saints.

The hour of God strikes for any soul when that soul yields to
prevenient grace and places itself utterly at the disposal of God,
confiding wholly in His divine wisdom. When our Lord had answered His
Blessed Mother she turned away satisfied. She did not have to concern
herself any further; it was now in Jesus' hands to provide as He would.
It remained but to see that His will should be carried out when He
made it known.

Submission is a difficult attitude to acquire; but it is such a happy
attitude when once one has acquired it. The critics of it wholly mistake
it and confound it with fatalism. It is not fatalism, or passive
acquiescence in another's will--a will that we have no part in forming
and cannot reject. Submission is the acceptance of God's will as the
expression of the highest wisdom for us. It is not true that we have no
part in forming it; it is at any time an expression of God's will for us
which is determined by the way in which we hitherto have corresponded to
that will. Submission means that we have put ourselves in a position of
active co-operation with that will, that we have made it ours: because
it is the expression of a divine wisdom and love we make it wholly ours.
And we have found in the acceptance of it not bondage but liberty. It is
wonderful how our preconceived notion of God and religion vanishes
before the first gleams of experience. To the unregenerate the service
of God is utter bondage; to the regenerate it is perfect freedom. And
the difference seems to be accounted for by the reversal of ideals, by a
new direction of affections. "I will run the way of thy commandments,
when thou hast set my heart at liberty,"

A true conversion is, perhaps, signified, more than in any other way, by
the liberty of the heart,--by this change in the object of our love.
That has been the constant exhortation to us, to love that which is
worthy of love. "Set your affection on things above." "Love not the
world, neither the things that are in the world." And we, loving the
world and the things that are in the world, listen impatiently. But
there is no possibility of a sincere conversion without a change of
love. "A change of heart" conversion is often called, and so inevitably
it is. And as we go through our self-examination one of the most
profitable questions we can ask is, "Wh