Are they not, after all, of the very same order? What is the greatest saint but that child of God who is most aware of his Divine sonship, and therefore most intent on doing his “Father’s business”? Fashions of service may change, but this fact remains changeless. The fashion of the past was to mortify the flesh, and to serve the world by prayer rather than by work. The fashion of the present sees that “laborare est orare,” and serves the world by self-devotion instead of self-denial. The past was ruled by negations, and the stern “Thou shalt not!” rose as a barrier between man and man. The “saint” was not merely, as the word signifies, one “set apart” to do the will of God “on earth as it is [done] in heaven,” but he became instead one _cut off_, or _separated_, from the life of ordinary humanity. In our day we have risen to the power of the _affirmation_, “Thou _shalt_ love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” and we go on to the inevitable sequence, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Not the denial or the evasion of human duties, but their fulfilment utterly, is our test of sainthood in the present. It may be less easy to trace our saints by the quiet fireside or in the busy street; in the senate house or on the market-place; but none the less saintly are these in their modern garb than those who went their way apart, as stately abbot or humble anchorite, as hooded friar or cloistered nun. The form may change, but the fact is the same. With the fact of a great love filling his soul, St. Francis, vowed to poverty, is still richer than the richest; and our modern saint, with all life’s gifts consecrated to service, may safely make the most of life, having thus the more to share. Having love, riches and poverty alike fall into their true place, as accidents, and not essentials of being. We go back to far Assisi, and, looking across the Umbrian plain, see the quaint quiet little hill-town—unchanged in seven centuries—still looking like a white dove fluttering down the dark slope of Monte Subiaco. Here we find the boy Francis, gay and careless, dreaming his boyish dreams of royal courts and of knightly fame; till, falling as a dark shadow across the glittering pageant, comes the vision of the world’s poverty and pain, and the dreamer wakes to take his chosen place among the poor and sorrowing. To spend and be spent for love’s sake is henceforth the aim and the achievement of this perfect life.