believing woman who sought out in Jerusalem the Cross of Sacrifice, but it was Constantine who lifted it to glory, and kings and pontiffs have for centuries consecrated it as the token of Faith and the symbol of Christianity. Saint Helen was but the handmaid of the Lord, and she withdraws into the shadows of history as soon as her task is accomplished. Lowliest of God's handmaids, veiled in the obscurest of cloisters, Margaret Mary lived just long enough to take a great message to a Priest of God, to whisper its meaning to the world, and then to hide herself in the depths of the Heart of Christ, Whose love she had revealed. And yet that message made its way to the France that had ignored her, a France of splendor and of shame, of bold unbelief and of patient faith; to that stricken land the embassy carried at last its own force and significance! Jansenism could not chill its ardor; vice could not tarnish its lustre; blasphemy could not silence its eloquence; the Revolution could not destroy its kingliness! The Saviour of mankind had said, "Behold the heart that has loved men!" And His servant had only said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord!" But, according to His word, it was done, and the whole Christian world has this year been consecrated by its supreme Pontiff to that Adorable Heart which gives and asks love, and love only. From the faith, living in the heart of a nation's women, comes then the movement that is the nation's life,—for faith is life, and unbelief is death. The Revolution might well have fancied that it had killed that sacred germ of eternal life in woman's heart.
Once, of old, in the town of consolation by the Lake of Tiberias, the ruler of the synagogue had pleaded for the life of his dead daughter, and the Master had said, "She is not dead, but sleepeth!" So was it in that beautiful France which is the favored land of Mary, and of the Sacred Heart! It was Jesus Himself who stretched out His benignant hand, who revealed His compassionate heart, and who said by means of each restored cloister of every religious order in the awakening land, "Maiden, I say to thee, arise!"
Gentlest and humblest of His handmaids, Madeleine Sophia Barat, on this day one hundred years ago, in the poverty and
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