To bring us back, therefore, when wandering, and to restore us to the circle of His chosen flock, our Saviour has made ample provision. Through those divine mediums of grace—the sacraments of His Church—He has arranged to succor all our wants and to cure our various infirmities. The sacraments of Baptism and Penance, in particular, were instituted to raise our souls from death to life, and to heal our spiritual wounds. Baptism may be aptly compared to the door of the sheepfold. It is the gate through which men must enter into the fold of Christ, it is the entrance to His Church. It clears away the guilt and stain of original sin, and restores the soul from a state of enmity to the friendship and grace of God. None can really belong to Christ, none can be of His true fold who have not entered by way of the door, who have not been baptized. Many there are who pretend to belong to Him and think themselves of the number of His flock; they speak of Him as their Master and Shepherd; they pretend to be doing His work; they call Him Lord and preach in His name; but they have not entered by the door of the sheepfold, and He knows them not. Like thieves and robbers, they have climbed up some other way, and they neither know Him, nor does He know them, neither can they understand His voice. Baptism is the entrance, it is the door, to the fold of Christ. And as it is through Baptism that our bountiful Lord first recalls us from the ways of sin and makes us members of his flock, so in the sacrament of Penance He has provided a means by which we may at all times be recalled from our wanderings and restored to His friendship. Penance is an inexhaustible means of reconciliation between the erring soul and God. It lasts throughout our lives, it stretches even to the end of time. If only we are men of goodwill and have at heart our eternal interests, we need not be disturbed at our frailty, or at repeated lapses into sin. There is no sin which cannot be forgiven by the sacrament of Penance. Not that anyone, knowing that he can be forgiven, should presume to abuse God’s gracious sacrament, and yield freely and without restraint to the voice of sin; nor that we are not to be truly sorry to the end of our days for having even once offended our benign Maker and Redeemer; but we must be confident that, whatever may have been our faults and failings, however prolonged and extraordinary our transgressions, if we approach the sacrament of Penance with sincere sorrow and a firm purpose of amendment, God will always lovingly receive us back to Himself, and remember no more our unfaithfulness. God hates sin, because it is opposed to Himself and is the only evil in the world, but He loves the wounded sinner who is made in His own image and likeness. Precious in the sight of God is the penitent sinner. Does He not tell us Himself that, like a good shepherd, He leaves ninety-nine just to go in search of one lost sheep? Yea, He assures us