Our Lord one day permitted St. Catherine of Sienna to see a human soul, and as she gazed transported at its exceeding beauty, He asked her if He had not had good reason to come down from heaven to save such a glorious creature. The saint said the soul was so beautiful that, if one could see it, one would be willing to suffer all possible pains and torments for love of it. My brethren, if, when you go to your homes, you should find in your house an angel with his face as the appearance of lightning, his eyes as a burning lamp, his body as a crystal, and his feet in appearance like to glittering brass, what would you do? Would you not, like St. John, fall down before his feet and adore him? Would you not faint and fall before him, or if you were so strengthened that you could look upon the glorious vision, would you not gaze upon it with deep and loving awe? Well! such a being you will find there, when you go home. It will go hence with you. It will remain there as long as you remain there. It will come away when you come away. This bright being of whom I speak is no visitor in your house, it is an inmate, it rises with you in the morning, accompanies you through the day, is present with you when you eat, is with you in sickness and in health, in life and in death. This bright and glorious being is yours--it is more yours than any thing else in the world, it is the only thing in the world that is really yours--it is yours; poverty cannot strip you of it, death cannot tear it from you; eternity cannot rob you of it. And this being is your soul, your precious, spiritual, immortal soul. All things else will forsake you, property, family, friends; but this will never forsake you. It is yours. It is yours inalienably and for ever. Your greatest, your only wealth and treasure. Oh, inestimable dignity! We are told of some saints, who used to make an act of respect to everyone they met, by way of saluting his guardian angel, and of others that they bowed down before those whom they knew, by the spirit of prophecy, would shed their blood for the faith. {217} But have we not cause enough to honor man, in the fact that he has a soul, an immortal soul, a soul which shall one day see God? Shall we not feel an ample respect for each other, my brethren, when we think of what we are? Who could ever speak an impure word before another if he thought of the dignity of a human soul? What young man would ever dare to go to scenes where he would blush that his mother or sister should be present, if he remembered that he took his own soul along with him? Who would lie, or cheat, or steal, if he thought of his soul? A great and overpowering thought; how does it belittle all the pride and ostentation of the external world! Come, my brethren, let us go into the streets of this city and look around us. There are stately buildings and proud equipages and gay and brilliant shops--but what are all these to the concourse of human beings,