sustentation on the way. . . The prophecy of the Lord, that the affliction was beyond anything which had ever befallen the human race, or ever would befall it, was literally fulfilled. There is nothing in history which can compare to it."

Isaac Williams says: "We are not to be entangled by secular cares, or bind ourselves to this life. And this St. Ambrose would explain to be the meaning of the warning, Woe to them that are with child, or that give suck in those days! that we are not to be hampered by temporal sorrows or joys. Thus also St. Augustine would interpret the warning, that your flight be not in the winter, and St. Hilary would take it not unlike this. So that the lesson intended is what St. Paul says, as a general precept to us all, the time is short, it remaineth that they who have wives be as they who had none; and they that weep as though they wept not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and they that buy as if they possessed not. For our flight out of this spiritual Egypt, which is the world, and in the night of Antichrist, must be in haste, so as not to be impeded by domestic affection, as they who have children, nor with temporal sorrows, as in winter. Well indeed might that tribulation be the greatest of all tribulations, inasmuch as that crime was the greatest of all crimes, which laid sacrilegious

hands on the Lord's Anointed. For it can only be exceeded by that last consummation of apostasy, when they shall have crucified afresh the Lord of life, and counted the Blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and done despite unto the Spirit of Grace. For when the Holy Ghost is rejected in His dispensation, then is there no more pardon; no more pardon in that generation, for wrath came upon them to the uttermost; no more in the Christian one, which now is; for when the world hath rejected the teaching of the Spirit, as Jerusalem did, then will the world, like Jerusalem, be at an end. That the prediction was not beyond the known facts in the first case, the account of the Jewish historian proves; for he uses almost the same words, 'If the misfortunes of all from the beginning of the world were compared with those of the Jews, they would appear much inferior on comparison.' And St. Chrysostom observes, that 'this is not overstated, the history of Josephus proves, himself a zealous Jew.' . The expression that no flesh should be saved, he interprets to this effect, that if the Roman siege had continued longer, no Jew would have been saved either in Judea or in the rest of the world, so hot was the persecution against them; but for the sake of the Christians it would be shortened.' .

What God does He does for

the sake of the elect, as they represent Christ Himself, for Whose sake all men are saved; for the salvation of His elect, and for the sake of His elect, will those days be shortened, lest the trial should be for them too exceeding great; but when it is at its height, then shall Christ appear."

First Thought.-One cannot but be moved by the tenderness and compassion of our Lord for our poor humanity, and its earthly ills. He said to the widow of Nain, "Weep not," and with the sisters of Lazarus He Himself wept at their brother's tomb. To the women of Jerusalem He said, as He went along the way of sorrows to Golgotha, "Weep not for me, but for yourselves and for your children." So intensely human He was, so sensitive to the least of our afflictions. Yet we are not to think that the evils over which He cried "woe", and from which He bade us pray deliverance, are of necessity hopeless. No temporal affliction can be hopeless save for the impenitent.

1. He bewailed the hard fate of the women of Jerusalem who at the time of the siege should be expecting. children, or should be nursing children whom God had given them, for it would be practically impossible for such to escape. Yet there is no greater natural blessedness than

that of motherhood. It is through childbearing, St. Paul says, that women are to be saved, in Christ's mercy, from the mischief wrought their sex by mother Eve, in the garden. God calls some women to the virgin life in holy religion, yet for the larger number motherhood is the vocation He assigns, and it is full of the richest possibilities of grace. The mothers of Jerusalem who could not escape the hostile pursuer, are not to be accounted unhappy, because they so perished with their offspring, if they were loyal servants of God in heart. The mothers who lost their babes in Herod's cruel massacre, at the time of our Lord's birth, were to be pitied because of the hard lot which was theirs; yet it was no small honour to have given the Holy Innocents to heaven. If our vocations be such as are plainly assigned us by God, we are not to fear though they seem to subject us to grievous temporal ills. He is able to much more than make up to us whatever we have to endure in this world.

2. The wintry storms are plainly of His sending. We have a right, indeed He enjoins it, to pray that our flight be not in the winter. And He surely hears the prayer. The fugitives from Jerusalem were able to escape up to the first of May, when the winter was well over. He does not always answer our prayers in that way,

but if they be genuine prayers, though our flight be in the winter, and though the storms overwhelm our bodies, they cannot impede the salvation of our souls. Doubtless it is often true that great affliction in the hour of the soul's passing unites it to our Lord more closely than a less agonizing death.

Second Thought.-We are not likely ever in this world to experience anything like the affliction which overtook the unhappy Jews in the day of the fall of their Holy City. And it may be that none of us now living shall remain until the days of Antichrist-nevertheless it is certain that we shall know something of the soulanguish of the sorely afflicted folk of both those times in the day in which we stand before our Lord for judgment. Then the believer shall realize adequately for the first time all the exceeding enormity of the sins of his earthly life, and the way in which he has outraged the goodness and mercy of God.

In the day of the soul's judgment it shall perceive for the first time the impiety of its sinful deeds throughout its earthly sojourn; deeds of hatred, cruelty, pride, lust, irreverence, dishonesty, selfishness. All its wicked, wanton and idle words; cruel words, slanderous, detracting, unjust words; words of irreverence, it