Once more: there are the "rough places." Rough tempers, rough words, and rough manners; such feelings as spite, and anger, and ill nature, and revenge; as cutting and cruel words, and quarrelling and fighting. Such rough places must be made very plain and smooth if the road is to be fitted for the feet of our meek and gentle Lord. And, lastly: "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed." So shall it indeed be to those that are found worthy to enter into the kingdom of heaven. But what that glory is who shall tell? St. John could not. "Beloved," he says, "we are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be." St. Paul could not, for when he was caught up into heaven he tells us that he heard words "which it is not granted to man to utter." Isaias could not. "From the beginning of the world," he says, "they have not heard; the eye hath not seen, O God! besides thee, what things thou hast prepared for them that wait for thee." All we know is, that this glory shall be very great. And if we serve God faithfully here we shall one day see it, and shall one day know. We shall awake after his likeness and be satisfied therewith. ------------------- {37} Sermon IX. Penance. _For now the axe is laid to the root of the tree._ --Matthew. iii. 10. St. John Baptist, my brethren, as you know, retired to the desert at an early age, and led there an austere and solitary life, eating coarse and unpalatable food, abstaining from wine and strong drink, cutting off all unnecessary enjoyments of the senses, and giving himself up to prayer and meditation. What was his special motive in this extraordinary course of penance? It was that he might worthily prepare himself for the office which had been as signed to him--that of disposing men's hearts to recognize and receive our Lord when he should come as their Redeemer. It was by penance alone that those hearts could be so disposed, and he was to be specially the apostle of penance; hence he had to give a signal example of it in his own person; for preaching, however eloquent, is of comparatively little effect unless the preacher practises the virtues to which he exhorts others; and the power of his preaching will be in proportion to the illustration which it finds in his own life. {38} Therefore, though it was not necessary for St. John, sanctified as he was even before his birth, to cut off all other sources of pleasure in order to fill his soul with the joy that comes from the love of God, and though he had no sins to atone for, for his life had been free from blame, still he took up this course of penance in order to show forth even more plainly than by his words the need that his hearers would have, in their measure, to do likewise, if they were to share in the redemption to come.