little less than mockery, and when we are wholly in earnest words of flattery are as disagreeable as the buzzing of insects. In the presence of heroic souls vain speech is doubly vain, and we best show our reverence for the noble dead not by eulogy, but by acting in their spirit and by faithfully striving to continue the work they began. If your venerable foundress could in bodily presence be here to-day to rejoice with us in all that God has wrought through the handmaidens of the Sacred Heart, she would crave not laudatory utterance, but elevation of soul, thoughts that breathe faith and hope, courage and love. She would ask us to dwell on the marvelous beneficent work of the society during the first century of its existence, only that we might thence derive greater confidence in God, more devout love for the Divine Saviour and more complete consecration of our lives to the cause for which He lived and died. For as much love as there is in us, so much religion, so much power; and as much self-seeking, so much limitation. The only true prosperity is prosperity of soul, and material progress, unless it be sustained by religious and moral progress, ends in decadence and ruin. If all is well within circumstances are never intolerable, but if inner wholeness be lacking we are wretched, though we be clothed with the pomp and majesty of kings.
What a gracious inspiration was that of Madam Barat, who, when she was drawn to found a society whose chief work should be education, felt that first of all it was necessary that she should baptize herself and her companions in the fountain head of divine love! For love alone can educate. The love of what is higher than ourselves; the love that bears us upward on the wings of hope and aspiration, of imagination and desire, toward perfect truth, beauty and goodness, as they are found in God, is the power that creates the greatest and the noblest men and women, whether they be saints, sages, heroes or supreme poets. It is because her love is the purest and most abiding that the mother is the greatest of all teachers, and it is because the Church has a mother's heart, which the worldlings and politicians who at times seem to control her have never been able to chill, that she is the great school of saints.
Education is largely persuasion, and they persuade best who
39
_055.jpg&oldid=6472418){kind=link}