His person, after His resurrection,
what the material body would have been in all of
us except for sin, and what it will be when, after feeding
on it in its purity, the bodies of each of us are
transfigured after its likeness. Here was the secret of the
spirit which set St. Simeon on his pillar and sent St.
Anthony to the tombs--of the night watches, the weary
fasts, the penitential scourgings, and life-long austerities
which have been alternately the glory and the reproach
of the mediaeval saints. They would overcome their
animal bodies, and anticipate in life the work of death
in uniting themselves more completely to Christ by
the destruction of the flesh which lay as a veil between
themselves and Him.

And such, I believe, to have been the central idea of
the beautiful creed which, for 1800 years, has tuned the
heart and formed the mind of the noblest of mankind.
From this centre it radiated out and spread, as time
went on, into the full circle of human activity, flinging
its own philosophy and its own peculiar grace over the
common detail of the common life of all of us. Like
the seven lamps before the Throne of God, the seven
mighty angels, and the seven stars, the seven sacraments
shed over us a never ceasing stream of blessed influence.
First there are the priests, a holy order set
apart and endowed with mysterious power, representing
Christ and administering his gifts. Christ, in his
twelfth year, was presented in the temple, and first
entered on His father's business; and the baptized
child, when it has grown to an age to become conscious
of its vow and of its privilege, again renews it in full
knowledge of what it undertakes, and receives again
sacramentally a fresh gift of grace to assist it forward on
its way. In maturity it seeks a companion to share its
pains and pleasures; and, again, Christ is present to
consecrate the union. Marriage, which outside the
church only serves to perpetuate the curse and bring
fresh inheritors of misery into the world, He made holy
by His presence at Cana, and chose it as the symbol to
represent His own mystic union with His church.

Even saints cannot live without at times some spot
adhering to them. The atmosphere in which we breathe
and move is soiled, and Christ has anticipated our wants.
Christ did penance forty days in the wilderness, not to
subdue His own flesh, for that which was already perfect
did not need subduing, but to give to penance a cleansing
vir