Let us now try to get at our Lord's meaning. It is quite common nowadays to see a grapery in a gentleman's country garden. The entire roof of those ornamental glass-houses is covered with luxuriant vines; and they in turn are loaded with rich green leaves, and with beautiful bunches of grapes. The sap has made its course through the length of the vine, and into the various branches. Here it has forced out a green leaf, and there a bunch of fruit. These it continues to feed, by a continuous flow, until the leaf has gained its size and color, and the fruit its delicacy of flavor. Both leaf and fruit owe their existence, their beauty, and whatever is excellent in them, to this sap, which is the source of all; but will you say that they do not have these things in themselves? Will you say that the grapes are not really fine flavored, but only called so because they belong to an excellent vine? {320} No, certainly not. You say the grapes are fine, because they really are fine, because they answer in point of taste to what you understand by that term. They have in themselves a something which is not accidental to them, but which is an essential quality in grapes of that kind, namely, that delicate flavor which has established their worth. Now, apply this to ourselves. We are united to our Lord through the Sacraments, as branches to a vine. His grace is that precious Sap which has been let in upon our souls, through those seven main channels. They cleanse and purify our souls. They sanctity them, and make them beautiful and pleasing to God. The acts of the soul, so long as it is united to God by this divine gift of grace, are at the same time the acts of grace. They are good and meritorious, inasmuch as they are done by the co-operation of grace with our intelligence and free will. By rewarding such acts as these, God rewards the works of his own hands. This is what St. Augustine says: "When God crowns our merits, He does no more than crown his own gifts." {321} Let me illustrate this in another way. St. Paul says, in his second Epistle to the Corinthians, "_I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ_." [Footnote 145] [Footnote 145: 2 Cor. xi., 2.] Here he calls the soul the wife, and Christ its husband. By this we are to understand, that the grace of Christ in the soul enables it first to conceive good desires, and then to bring forth good works, which are, as it were, the children of the soul. Thus a dignity and worth are communicated to them, which are, in a true sense, divine. Suppose, for instance, a Prince of royal blood were to marry a peasant girl. Her children would unquestionably have royal blood in their veins, how ever obscure may have been the parentage of their mother. They would be entitled to the right of succession, and could claim the throne of their father. Well, in like manner our good works, having God as their Author, are able to claim from Him a supernatural reward. {322}