ee to follow our own devices?
Such an assumption is hardly justified in the case of One to Whom the
fall of a sparrow is a matter of interest. It is our weakness, or the
sign of our spiritual incompetence, that we have unconsciously removed
the greater part of life from the jurisdiction of the divine will. We do
not habitually think of God as interested in the facts of daily
experience; we do not take Him with us into offices and factories.
Perhaps we think that they are hardly fit places for God, and I have no
doubt that He has many things to suffer there. But He is there, and will
suffer, until we recognise His right there, and insist upon His there
being supreme.

Let us go back for a moment to Our Lady standing outside the place where
Jesus was preaching, perplexed and worried at the course He was taking.
I suppose that it is always easier to surrender ourselves unreservedly
into God's hands than it is to so surrender some one we love. I suppose
that S. Mary so trusted in God that she never thought with anxiety of
what His providence was preparing for her; but she would not quite take
that attitude about her Son; or rather, while she did intellectually, no
doubt, take that attitude, her feelings never went the whole distance
that her mind went. But surrender to the will of God means complete
surrender of ourself and ours. It means absolute confidence in God, it
means lying quiet in his arms, as the child lies still in the arms of
his mother. It means that we trust God.

Rose-Mary, Sum of virtue virginal,
Fresh Flower on whom the dew of heaven downfell;
O Gem, conjoined in joy angelical,
In whom rejoiced the Saviour was to dwell:
Of refuge Ark, of mercy Spring and Well,
Of Ladies first, as is of letters A,
Empress of heaven, of paradise and hell--
Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.

O Star, that blindest Phoebus' beams so bright,
With course above the empyrean crystalline;
Above the sphere of Saturn's highest height,
Surmounting all the angelic orders nine;
O Lamp, that shin'st before the throne divine,
Where sounds hosanna in cherubic lay,
With drum and organ, harp and cymbeline--
Mother, of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,

O Cloister chaste of pure virginity,
That Christ hath closed 'gainst crime for evermo';
Triumphant Temple of the Trinity,
That didst the eternal Tartarus o'erthrow;
Prin