This compassion was not only a matter of honour, but of faith. It was one of the principles of his life and conduct that hereby was set forth the love of God, and applied to the needs of man. He used often to say that countless other things manifested the boundless love of God to men, but of those we know, these surpass the greatness of all the rest, which He ceases not to bestow before man's rise and after his setting. "To touch lightly a few of these in the case of men who rise and set: God the Son of God gave for each man before he was born the ransom of His own death. God the Father sent His own same Son into the world to die for the man: God the Holy Ghost poured Himself out an earnest for him. So together the whole Trinity, one God, together set up the Sacraments by which he is born, cleansed, defended, and strengthened, gave the props of His own law to rule and teach him, and generously made provision for his good by other mysterious means. When man's fitful life is past and its course cut off by death, when his once dearest look on him now with aversion, when parents and children cast him forth with anxious haste from the halls once his, God's most gracious kindness scorns not what all others despise. Then straightway He ordains not only angelic spirits to the ward of the soul at its return to its Maker, but He sends for the burial service those who are first and foremost of His earthly servants, to wit the priests and others in the sacred orders. And this is His command to them: 'Behold,' He says, 'My priests and caretakers of My palaces in the world, behold My handiwork. I have always loved it. I spared not My only Son for it but made Him share in its mortality and its death. Behold, I say, that is now become a burden to its former lovers and friends. They crowd to cast it out and drive it forth. Away, then, speed and help My refugee: take up the Image of My Son, crucified for it: take instruments for incense and wax. Ring out the signals of My Church for a solemn assembly; raise high your hymnal voices, open the doors of My house and its inner shrines: place near to the altar, which holds the Body of My Son, what is left of that brother or sister; finally, cover him a bier with costly palls, for at last he triumphs: crowd it with lamps and candles, circle round him, overthrown as he is, with helping crowds of servants. Do more. Repeat the votive offering of My Son. Make the richest feast, and thus the panting spirit, restless and weary with the jars of the wonted mortality it has just laid by, may breathe to strength: and the flesh, empty for the while of its old tenant, and now to be nursed in the lap of the Mother Earth, may be bedewed with a most gracious holiness, so that at the last day when it is sweetly reunited to its well-known companion, it may gladly flower anew and put on with joy the everlasting freshness." This was no sudden seizure and passing emotion at the romance of funerals. He issued a