our own private judgment or our own personal faith and illumination.

15. We need a supreme authority and an infallible guide, and it is a great blessing that God has given it to us. Our Lord committed His whole flock, both sheep and lambs, to the care of St. Peter. All those who wish to remain in the fold of Christ must therefore obey the voice of the successor of St. Peter. He is the Vicar of Christ, and whoever obeys him obeys Christ, who teaches and governs the Church through him. The bishop rules and teaches his own church by the authority of the Pope, and the priest governs and teaches his parish or other particular charge by the authority of the bishop.

16. In this way every one of the faithful is instructed and guided, without any fear of error, in the knowledge and practice of that holy religion which God has revealed. Every one who faithfully follows until death this infallible guidance of the Catholic Church will certainly be saved; and whoever wilfully and finally strays away from it will most assuredly lose his soul.

LESSON LXXIV.

THE LILY MAID OF ASTOLAT.

1. THEN spake the lily maid of Astolat:
"Sweet father, all too faint and sick am I
For anger: these are slanders: never yet
Was noble man but made ignoble talk.
He makes no friend who never made a foe.
But now it is my glory to have loved

One peerless, without stain: so let me pass, My father, howsoe' er I seem to you,

Yet, seeing you desire your child to live,
Thanks, but you work against your own desire;
For if I could believe the things you say

I should but die the sooner: wherefore cease,
Sweet father, and bid call the ghostly man
Hither, and let me shrive me clean, and die."

2. So when the ghostly man had come and gone,
She with a face, bright as for sin forgiven,
Besought Lavaine to write as she devised
A letter, word for word; and when he asked
"Is it for Lancelot, is it for my dear lord?
Then will I bear it gladly"; she replied,
"For Lancelot and the Queen and all the world,
But I myself must bear it." Then he wrote
The letter she devised; which being writ
And folded, "Oh sweet father, tender and true,
Deny me not," she said "you never yet
Denied my fancies-this, however strange,
My latest lay the letter in my hand
A little ere I die, and close the hand
Upon it; I shall guard it even in death.

And when the heat is gone from out my heart,
Then take the little bed on which I died
For Lancelot's love, and deck it like the Queen's
For richness, and me also like the Queen
In all I have of rich, and lay me on it.
And let there be prepared a chariot-bier
To take me to the river, and a barge
Be ready on the river, clothed in black.
I go in state to court, to meet the Queen.
There surely I shall speak for mine own self,
And none of you can speak for me so well.
And therefore let our dumb old man alone

Go with me; he can steer and row, and he
Will guide me to that palace, to the doors."

3. She ceased: her father promised; whereupon
She grew so cheerful that they deemed her death
Was rather in the fantasy than the blood.
But ten slow mornings past, and on the eleventh
Her father laid the letter in her hand,

And closed the hand upon it, and she died.
So that day there was dole in Astolat.

4. But when the next sun brake from underground, Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows Accompanying, the sad chariot bier

Past like a shadow through the field, that shone
Full-summer, to that stream whereon the barge,
Palled all its length in blackest samite, lay.
There sat the lifelong creature of the house,
Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck,
Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face.
So those two brethren from the chariot took
And on the black decks laid her in her bed,
Set in her hand a lily, o'er her hung
The silken case with braided blazonings,
And kissed her quiet brows, and saying to her,
"Sister, farewell forever," and again,
"Farewell, sweet sister," parted all in tears.
Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead
Steered by the dumb went upward with the flood-
In her right hand the lily, in her left

The letter-all her bright hair streaming down-
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold

Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white

All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead
But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled.
TENNYSON.

LESSON LXXV.

THE KINGDOM OF SOULS.

1. THE kingdom of souls was absolutely the very opposite of the Roman Empire, and it is impossible to imagine a more complete antagonism. The Roman Empire was universal servitude; the kingdom of souls, universal liberty. Between them it was a question of being or not being. The struggle was inevitable; it was to be a deadly struggle.

2. Now, what force did the kingdom of souls dispose of against that empire, covered with legions? None.. The Forum? It was no more. The Senate ?> It was no more. The people? They were no more. Eloquence? It was no more. Thought? It was no more. Was it at least permitted to the first Christians whom the Gospel had raised up in the world to gather one against a hundred thousand for the combat? No, that was not permitted them.

3. What, then, was their strength? The same that Jesus Christ had before them. They had to confess His name, and then to die-to die to-day, to-morrow, the day after; to die one after another— that is to say, to vanquish servitude by the peaceful exercise of the liberty of the soul; to vanquish force, not by force, but by virtue. It had been said to them: If for three centuries you can boldly say,