sight of the fact that the deeper our sorrow the more efficacious will be the sacrament, for the one essential on which the Whole fruitfulness or barrenness of the sacrament depends is the genuineness of our contrition. We should try to emulate the great models of repentance, the humility of the publican and of the prodigal, the tears of David and of Peter, the ecstatic abandon of Magdalen, the consuming zeal of St. Paul, and the utter disregard of earthly things and earthly opinions displayed by the Emperor Theodosius when he cast aside his crown and his purple, and in the presence of all the people prostrated himself in the dust before the temple of God. In to-day's Gospel Christ absolves the paralytic without the formality of a confession; but Christ's ministers cannot, as He, read the reins and the heart. To the confessor as judge and physician the case must be presented and the disease disclosed. While it is well to manifest even our venial faults, it is absolutely necessary to confess all the mortal sins we are then and there conscious of having committed, together with the number of times and the leading circumstances of their commission. Alas! what care, what order, what exactness are employed in the management of business affairs, in the keeping of business accounts, and how true it is that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. Nor is it of least importance to remember that, though the Sacrament of Penance remits the guilt of sin and the eternal punishment that is its due. there remains a temporal atonement to be under-
