has his spirit been most strongly fulfilled in gladness or desire? Less often in solitary exaltation than at times when consciousness has been swept onward and upward by "one common wave of hope and joy, lifting mankind again." Thousands knew such absolution and enrichment of being during the Great War: purified, freed, enlarged in their whole manhood or womanhood, by sharing a nation's life. Whether in sober or catastrophic times, the wisdom of the Church steadfastly supplies such experience, through the epic cycle of her Year. No military drill can surpass that discipline in its power to secure inward solidarity. How good it is for us! If sorrow befalls at Christmas, what comfort to rejoice that Love is born among men! If joy comes on Ash-Wednesday, how steadying the restraint of accepting our share in the penitence of a sinful world! By so merging personal mood and circumstance in the universal emotion of Christendom, there is incalculable gain in subtle spiritual courtesy. Nor can many more effective means be found for escaping the self-centredness which is nowhere more a curse than in the religious life.

And look at the matter, further, from the point of view, not of the individual but of the community. Are we not coming to feel that in one way or another, the Catholic ideal which subordi

nates personal to general emotion, is needed by the modern state? Mechanical and automatic subjection to authority is bad, whether in state or Church; but voluntary self-control, born of imaginative sympathy, is the first qualification for democracy. A loving obedience to the will of Mother Church as she calls her children to follow the successive phases of her dramatic sequence, can furnish powerful aid in forming the interior habits which must be the strength of a socialized civilization. Our national life needs nothing so much as a sense of unity; and unity worth having can not be imposed from without or above, imperialisms to the contrary notwithstanding. It must flow forth from the spiritual organism into the political.

In our irresponsible and individualistic democracy, the value of the regulating and fusing power afforded by Catholic tradition, must be evident to every thoughtful Churchman; and his recognition of this value can add a patriotic stimulus to the passion with which he tries to use and share his privileges. Of course, the observance of the Christian Seasons is only one aspect of the corporate Catholic life; but it is a dramatized aspect which appeals to every man, woman and child. Enhanced fidelity in the observance might be one useful way of easing the transition from an in

dividualistic society where every man is cheerfully fighting and feeling "on his own," to the socialized democracy where every man shall discover his true freedom, in the harmony of fellowship.

This socialized democracy may be coming sooner than we think. When it arrives, its citizens may well recognize that qualities most conducive to the health and peace of their politico-industrial existence result from the training offered by the everchanging, ever-renewed corporate experience of the Christian Mysteries. The Catholic life should normally be the soul of the democratic state.

CHAPTER I: THE SEASON OF ADVENT

Antiphon: When ye see these things, know ye that the kingdom of heaven is nigh at hand.

V. It is high time to awake out of sleep. R. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which Thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when He shall come again in His glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through Him Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.