that day on the mountain plateau. Her heart grew ever more sore and angry as different suspicions crept into it, until, unable to bear them longer, she resolved to walk towards the Villa degli Uccelli in the hopes of meeting the young man face to face. 66 Now, with my eyes open, I shall be able to judge for myself," thought she. It was a rosy, merry spring evening, and Giovanna looked about her with a feeling of sadness which she vainly tried to combat. It was Brian's imagination that had dressed the hills in beauty for her and made the lake a great and sensitive creature in fact she had been looking at the world through Brian's eyes: if their gaze were withdrawn how would it appear to her? With lagging feet she left the highroad to follow a narrow stoney path that wound upwards among almond trees and between rows of budding vines, and then climbed to a rugged olive-yard whence she could look straight down into the terraced garden of the Villa degli Uccelli. She looked, and she saw Brian stretched face downwards in the shade of a palm-tree, reading. Giovanna watched him, uncertain whether she should hail him or not, while bitterly mindful that yesterday she would not have hesitated. Presently he turned on his side, glanced up, and saw her. Surely, surely he was going to scramble up to her, or invite her to scramble down to him. The low wall and the two tangled terraces that separated them offered no difficulties to her surely he would bid her come. Brian sat up and lifted his cap: why did he not flourish it after the cheerful fashion in which he usually greeted her? "Taking a stroll?" he inquired in a spiritless tone. "Yes," she answered. It was hardly necessary for either to raise the voice: on this mountain conversation was possible between individuals separated from each other by a quarter of an hour's walk. "It's a nice evening," added Brian after a pause, his eyes reverting to his book. Nice! Was not the air all scented with bay and myrtle leaves, the lake languidly calm lest it should shake those purple reflections thrust so deep into it? And the mountains, here flowery and green, there beyond the water, looking over each other's shoulders through veils of mist tinted with such infinite delicacy? Was it not Brian who had told her how they created mists for themselves out of the winds to wrap their cool brows in? But now, apparently Brian wanted to read. Giovanna addressed him again tremulously : "You don't practice what you preach," she observed. "You've often told me one should read no book but Nature's in spring particularly spring in Italy." Would he not jump up, laughing now? But no! "Did I say that?" he asked in the same dull tone. I'm deep in a novel now." 66 Well, "Far be it from me to interrupt you, then," she returned, and tossed her head, but he did not look up to see. "Goodbye!" she cried. "Good-bye!" he answered. She went on by the arid little path that, from the bright cultivated patch of ground, led now among rocks and bushes, and his eyes followed her retreating form; but she did not know it. (To be continued.) ON THE CLIFF (From the French of Paul Bourget.) The butterflies-now blue, now white- A soft wind stirs the sultry air, Below with sob and sullen shock, JOHN J. HAYDEN. AMEN CORNER XXX X CONFORMITY TO THE WILL OF GOD T is almost necessary to offer an apology for making Conformity to the Will of God the subject of this paper. To conform our will to the will of God is so natural, so supernaturally natural, so obvious a duty, so plain a consequence of our creaturehood, of the relation between the creature and the Creator, that we are in danger of regarding it less as a truth than as a mere truism. But truisms are also true. That sanctity consists in perfect conformity to the holy will of Almighty God which is the sovereign rule and standard of right, the supreme criterion of justice and goodness and holiness, and that all true Christians and all truly reasonable beings, even without any pretensions to sanctity, must strive to conform their wills to the Divine Will-this is so plainly dictated by reason and faith that one is puzzled in imagining how great spiritual writers like Father Alphonsus Rodriguez and St. Alphonsus Liguori have contrived to make conformity to the will of God the subject of separate treatises of considerable length. Nay, one is inclined to sympathise a good deal with the view taken of this matter by a strongminded man of the world while he was just dying a good Christian death. The famous Dublin physician, Sir Dominick Corrigan, was attended on his death-bed in Merrion Square by the administrator of the parish, Father Nicholas Donnelly, now Bishop of Canea. Amongst other exercises of devotion he made Sir Dominick repeat one day an act of submission to the will of God. When Dr. Donnelly had left the room, the dying man said to someone near his bed: That was a foolish prayer. Submit to the will of God! Why, of course I must submit. What else can I do?" Yes; but there are different ways of submitting, different motives for submitting, different degrees of submission. What is plain in theory is often very difficult in practice, and even after a long and successful life it is not everyone who can echo with the proper submission of heart and mind the Nunc Dimittis of old Simeon.* And not only the final surrender of life-that supreme boon, which is the foundation and first condition of all natural and supernatural gifts and blessings, although indeed that fundamental gift is rather existence itself, which God will never ask us to resign but only a certain form and manner of it-even the surrender of some of the transitory and subsidiary functions and privileges of life is so terrible a trial for many that they find it hard to say, "Be it done to me according to Thy word." When it comes to the point, we are apt to forget the plain truths that we have accepted theoretically, and we need to remind ourselves over again of the utter unreasonableness of any rebellion, small or great, against the holy will of God. This has at all times been felt by all those who tried to serve God. The very first of the Psalms says of the just man, "His will is in the law of God." Isaias (xl. ii.) defines him "a man of God's will." The Wise Man upbraids the wicked, "Ye have not walked according to the will of God," and he prays for himself, "Teach me to do Thy will, O God." Whenever St. Peter, and, above all, St. Paul, wish to inculcate any important principle, they begin, " This is the will of God" and the blessing at the end of their Epistles is (Hebrews xiii. 22), "May the God of peace fit you in all goodness, that you may do His will." But before they wrote thus, God Himself had become man to teach this lesson, the Redeemer for whom the Royal Prophet a thousand years before had said, speaking in the person of Jesus Christ: "In the head of the book it is written of me that I should do Thy will, O God"; But it will be a great help to have made use habitually of that little prayer to which Pius X. has attached a plenary indulgence for the moment of death for all the faithful who, on any day they may choose, will receive the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist and make the following act for the love of God: "O Lord my God, whatsoever manner of death may be pleasing to Thee, with all its anguish, pain and sorrows, I now accept from Thy hand with a resigned and willing spirit." and He Himself said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me"; and, when the consummation of His atonement began, He formally repeated His act of conformity and submission: "Father, not My will but Thine be done." That is the best form to give to our sacrifice to begin with the name of the Father and end with the will of God. That name of Father which God claims so jealously for Himself, the first word which His Divine Son who knows the way to His Father's Heart puts on the lips of us His brothers when He would teach us how to pray--that name is enough to reassure us, to make us feel a happy childlike confidence as regards everything whatsoever that He wishes to do in us or by us. God is our Father: whom can we fear? On the top of a high cliff overhanging the shore of one of the Orkney Islands a flock of sheep were grazing. A lamb fell over the brink, but managed to cling to a ledge that jutted out half-way down; and its bleating was heard above the noise of the waves dashing against the rocks below. There was no way of rescuing the poor little animal except by letting someone down from above by a stout rope tied carefully under his arms. A sturdy little lad came forward to volunteer for the perilous service, but with one important proviso, "I'll go, if my father holds the rope." God is our Father, and He holds in His hand the thread of our destiny. No matter how hard the work, no matter how great the peril, we are safe, for our Father's eye is upon us and His arms are round us, and His Heart is full of love for us all the while. "I'll go down, for my Father is holding the rope." No, God will never try us beyond our strength, and to those whom He compliments and honours by asking from them some great sacrifice He is always sure to give such superabundant grace as to make the sacrifice possible and almost easy. But we must not reserve the exercise of this comprehensive virtue of conformity to the Divine Will for those great occasions which for most of us may never come. The ordinary weariness of duty, the disagreeable things that occur now and then, not worthy of the name of trials yet hard to bear-our own shortcomings and faults, our temptations of various kinds from within and from without: all these, as far as they VOL. XLIII.-No. 507. 43 |