Worldliness of heart and secularity of aim is sure to transpire to those around us, however much we may array ourselves in the livery of religion. Love of power, or love of pre-eminence, or mortified vanity,—if we are under the dominion of these sentiments, we cannot easily disguise them from others, however effectually we may close our own eyes to their presence within. And similarly, when the simple motive to serve and please Christ reigns in any heart, men speedily discover it, and recognize it as something above nature. And the discovery of this supernatural aim impresses them much more forcibly for good than a thousand efforts made of set purpose to reclaim and convert them. * * * * * We have spoken of the Service rendered to Christ in His members. Fervently do I trust that in all English Sisterhoods this Service will ever hold a foremost place. We tremble for these Institutions as sure rapidly to deteriorate, whenever the notion insinuates itself that there is any life higher than that of active beneficence fed from the springs of devotion. My Sisters in Christ, if such a thought ever creeps into your heart, let me pray you instantly to reject it, as totally contrary to the Word of God and to the Mind of Christ, however specious in appearance. It is indeed wonderful how, to any person who has the Holy Scriptures in his hand, the notion of a life of exclusive contemplation and devotional exercise can ever approve itself. The instances usually quoted in favour of such a life, St. John the Baptist and Elijah the Prophet, are singularly out of point. For while it is of course true that these men did not live the ordinary domestic life of their times, that for the great purpose of their miraculous vocation they withdrew from home and family ties, it is notoriously untrue that they came into no contact with their fellow-men. They were national reformers; and national reformers cannot do their work without coming into rude collision with the sins, and prejudices, and errors of their day; when they were taken from the earth, it was with all the soil and dust of Earth’s conflict upon them. Thus these eminent characters lend not a particle of support to the idea that a life of entire isolation from our fellow-creatures is legitimate or after the Scriptural model. Nor does the idea gain any real countenance from the example of St. John the Apostle. True it is that he was not conspicuous for activity, like his great colleagues, St. Peter and St. Paul; that his character had in it probably a larger share of reflection than of will; but, whether we look at the fact of his having composed under Inspiration the profoundest part of the Canon of the New Testament, and having presided over the Seven Churches of Asia, or at the traditions of his bringing the robber chieftain, who had been one of his flock, to repentance, and of his Sermons in old age reducing themselves to the one precept, “Little