It is all in keeping with the practical character of the man, the prayer which on one critical occasion Benvenuto Cellini records his offering: “Almighty God, favour my cause, for Thou knowest it is a just one, and that I am not on my part wanting in my utmost efforts to make it succeed.” On another he tells us how he “told Lionardo, who was incessantly crying out, ‘Jesus, Jesus!’ that Jesus would assist him, if he strove to help himself.” Elsewhere again Cellini emphatically asserts his systematic habit of “always exerting his utmost efforts to extricate” himself from difficulty, as well as of devoutly recommending himself to God, by whom alone those efforts could achieve success, and who so often had delivered him when the best of these had clearly and entirely failed. Saintly as well as Saint Francis of Sales bids his brethren, “En toutes vos affaires, appuyez-vous totalement sur la providence de Dieu, par laquelle seule tous vos desseins doivent réussir; travaillez néanmoins de votre côté tout doucement pour co-opérer avec icelle.” The counsel is at one, _au fond_, with that of the heathen stoic in the old play:— “I am plain, fathers. Here you look about One at another, doubting what to do, With faces, as you trusted to the gods, That still have saved you; and they can do it: but They are not wishings, or base womanish prayers, Can draw their aids; but vigilance, counsel, action; Which they will be ashamed to forsake. ’Tis sloth they hate, and cowardice.” _CO-OPERANT UNITS._ EPHESIANS iv. 16. The universal Church is designated by the apostle a body, which whole body is fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part. And every part in its measure, and according to its imparted power. Very little are some of the joints and fibres; but every little helps. Who shall despise the whole of small things? But for the accumulated atoms, the aggregated littles, where were the body? “Let me not deem that I was made in vain, Or that my Being was an accident, Which Fate, in working its sublime intent, Not wished to be, to hinder would not deign. _Each drop uncounted in a storm of rain_ _Hath its own mission_, and is duly sent To its own leaf or blade, not idly spent ’Mid myriad dimples on the shipless main. The very shadow of an insect’s wing, For which the violet cared not while it stayed, Yet felt the lighter for its vanishing, Proved that the sun was shining by its shade: Then can a drop of the eternal spring, Shadow of living lights, in vain be made?”[38]