ing them, pleading the claims of parental authority as opposed to them, with the result of eventually weaning the child from devout ways to an easy-going popular churchmanship. It even happens, in these days, that the children become the betrayers of their parents. Parents brought up in the ways of the Catholic religion, just through their great love for their children, are induced to surrender much of that they have for years believed and practised, because the children do not like it, and want an easier type of doing God service. Thus the children may very likely have, in God's eyes, caused their parents to be put to death.

We are not to forget that we ourselves are in danger of playing the betrayer's part. If we are not altogether strict about that which concerns our religion, we are almost certain to be used by Satan in tempting those near and dear to us to conform to our lax ways, and to abate their own rigour of devotion in this or that particular in which we are pleased to regard them as too strict. There is always grievous peril in using one's influence to persuade another to lower his standard of devout living.

Second Thought.-It does not seem possible that those who live lives altogether spotless, unselfishly devoted to the welfare of their neigh

bours-ready even to lay down their lives for them, should be hated, and that not by one or another here and there, who might fancy himself to have been aggrieved, but by their neighbours generally. Yet this the Master distinctly foretells as the portion of His followers. They are to be hated by all men for His name's sake. They hated Him, why should they not hate His disciples? We find such a doctrine very hard; no one likes to be hated, we want to be loved, or at least to have the good-will and friendliness of all about us. We would make large sacrifices to obtain and to hold the kind feelings of our neighbours. But this cannot be if we would be loyal to Christ. We may indeed hope for the affection and friendship of our fellow-believers, but not of those who are unfriendly to the divine religion. And this is one of the hardest lessons for many Christians to learn. We must expect to be hated by those who are opposed to the Catholic Church. We must also be quite willing to have it so, and not to repine because the children of this world speak against us, shun us, perhaps even strive to work us mischief.

As a matter of fact few of us are really hated by the world; we are more likely to be treated with amiable indifference, as quite unimportant folk. It should be matter of concern to us that we do not meet with more animosity. Why are

we not hated? For all their indifference about many things the children of this world are bitter enough when they are exposed or thwarted in their wrongdoing. Very likely we are not hated because we are too tolerant of wrongdoing, too cowardly to take a strong stand for the right, too lukewarm in our following of Christ to be strenuous champions of His cause.

Third Thought.-"But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved." What does that mean? It is a gracious word of consolation for those who feel increasingly, as the years pass, how greatly they fail in their discipleship. The wonderful precepts of the Master ring continually in our ears, and we cannot but realize that we do not carry them out in our lives. We cannot bear to be hated, we have not the courage to come out so uncompromisingly for our Lord as to arouse the world's resentment against us. How then are we to be saved? Only by striving more and more each day to learn the lesson of endurance, patient continuance in the effort to be so loyal to Christ that more and more the distinction between our standards and those of the world will be recognized. Only we are never to lose sight of the fact that the breach between ourselves and the world must be widening, not being closed. It

will mean always bearing more, a harder life, a more isolated life-so far as this world's interests and joys are concerned, a being less loved by worldly companions. Nevertheless the perseverance in this aloofness from the things temporal brings at last great wealth of things eternal.

XCII.

"But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand), then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains: and let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house, neither enter therein, to take any thing out of his house: and let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment."-St. Mark xiii. 14-16.

Exposition.-Swete says: "The Greek phrase abomination of desolation is already quoted in I Maccabees, and applied to the altar of Zeus erected in the temple by Antiochus, B.C. 168. The word abomination, as used by the Seventy, is not limited to an object of idolatrous worship; any symbol of heathenism which outraged the religious feelings of the Jewish people might be so described. The defining genitive, of desolation, limits us to an outrage which was the prelude of national ruin, a crisis corresponding in effect if not in circumstances with the in