Such I believe to have been the central idea of the beautiful creed which, for 1,500 years, tuned the heart and formed the mind of the noblest of mankind. From this centre it radiated out and spread, as time went on, into the full circle of human activity, flinging its own philosophy and its own peculiar grace over the common details of the common life of all of us. Like the seven lamps before the Throne of God, the seven mighty angels, and the seven stars, the seven sacraments shed over mankind a never-ceasing stream of blessed influences. The priests, a holy order set apart and endowed with mysterious power, represented Christ and administered his gifts. Christ, in his twelfth year, was presented in the Temple, and first entered on his Father's business; and the baptised child, when it has grown to an age to become conscious of its vow and of its privilege, again renews it in full knowledge of what it undertakes, and receives again sacramentally a fresh gift of grace to assist it forward on its way. In maturity it seeks a companion to share its pains and pleasures; and, again, Christ is present to consecrate the union. Marriage, which, outside the Church, only serves to perpetuate the curse and bring fresh inheritors of misery into the world, He made holy by his presence at Cana, and chose it as the symbol to represent his own mystic union with his Church. Even saints cannot live without at times some spot adhering to them. The atmosphere in which we breathe and move is soiled, and Christ has anticipated our wants. Christ did penance forty days in the wilderness, not to subdue his own flesh--for that which was already perfect did not need subduing--but to give to penance a cleansing virtue to serve for our daily or our hourly ablution. Christ consecrates our birth; Christ throws over us our baptismal robe of pure unsullied innocence. He strengthens us as we go forward. He raises us when we fall. He feeds us with the substance of his own most precious body. In the person of his minister he does all this for us, in virtue of that which in his own person He actually performed when a man living on this earth. Last of all, when time is drawing to its close with us--when life is past, when the work is done, and the dark gate is near, beyond which the garden of an eternal home is waiting to receive us, his tender care has not forsaken us. He has taken away the sting of death, but its appearance is still terrible; and He will not leave us without special help at our last need. He tried the agony of the moment; and He sweetens the cup for us before we drink it. We are dismissed to the grave with our bodies anointed with oil, which He made holy in his last anointing before his passion, and then all is over. We lie down and seem to decay--to decay--but not all. Our natural body decays, being the last remains of the infected matter which we have inherited from Adam; but the spiritual body, the glorified substance which has made our life, and