These poor children are spiritually dead. Ah! but there must have been a time when they "began to die." There must have been a moment when they first took to these scandalous habits. Then why did you not see that they went to confession, to Mass, to Holy Communion? Why did you not insist upon their morning and evening prayers being said? Why did you not keep them at home after dark? Brethren, soon we shall come to this pass: that none will be considered a child after five years of age. Our children of this age and country are "at the point of death." They are growing up with ideas of false independence, false liberality, and false religious principles. You parents, then, must call upon Christ. Jesus is represented on earth by his church and his priests. You must go, then, to church and priest, if you want your children to be saved before they die the death of sin. You must cut them off from the beginning of evil as soon as you see the least sign of the fever of sin upon them. Go yourself to Jesus Christ. Kneel down and pray for them. Lift up your voices and cry: "Lord, come down before that my child shall die." Send them to the sacraments; send them to Sunday-school; send them to Vespers and Benediction. Above all, interest yourself in your children. Go to Jesus, as the ruler did. Pray for your children every time you go to Mass and Communion, and every night and morning. {442} Do not let them form evil companions and low associates. Insist upon their obeying the parental authority, and above all, teach them that boys and girls of fifteen or sixteen are not men and women. Lastly, let us all, priests and people, lift up our hands and cry to Jesus: "Lord, come down before that these children die; come down with thy lessons of obedience; come down in Holy Communion; come down with thy grace and with thy quickening Spirit." Then, if we do these things--if we attend to our solemn duties as parents and pastors--we may each expect to hear from our dear Master's lips: "Go thy way, thy son liveth." Rev. Algernon A. Brown. -------------------- Sermon CXXXIII. _Giving thanks always for all things._ --Ephesians v. 20. If we stop a moment, my dear brethren, to consider the meaning of these words, which we find in the Epistle of to-day, they will, I think, seem to us rather surprising; and if we did not believe in the inspiration of their author we should be inclined to say that he rather exaggerated the truth, and that we cannot be expected to take the lesson which he here teaches us quite literally. "Surely," we might say, "St. Paul must have meant that we should give thanks for all things which are really fit subjects for thanksgiving; that we should not neglect our duty of gratitude to God for his benefits. And when he tells us to give thanks for all things it was a little slip of his pen; we muse understand not all things, but all good things." {443}