THE IDEA OF A SAINT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 215, 8 June 1877, Page 3

THE IDEA OF A SAINT.

Worldly-minded men, however rich, if Catholics, cannot, till they utterly lose their faith, be the same as those that are external to the Church ; they have an instinctive veneration, for those who have the traces of beaven upon them, and they praise what they do not imitate. Such men have an idea "before them which a Protestant nation has not ; they have the idea of a saint ; they believe they realise the existence of those rare servants of God who rise up from time to time in the Catholic Church, like angels in disguise, and shed around them a light as they walk on their way heavenward. Tliey may not in practice do what is right and good, but they know what to think and how to judge.j udge. They have a standard for their principles of conduct, and it is the image, the pattern of saints which forms it for them. Very various are the saints; their very variety is a token of G^d's workmanship ; but however various, and whatever wa3 their special line of duty, they have been beroes in it; they have attained' such noble self-command, they have so crucified the flesh, they ba.ve so renounced the world, they are so meek, so gentle, so tender-hearted, so merciful, so full of prayer, so diligent, so forgetful of injuries ; they have sustained such great and continued pains, they have persevered iv such vast labours, they have made such valiant confessions, they have wrought such abundant miracles, they have been blessed with such strange successes, that they have set up a standard before us of truth, of magnanimity, of holiness, of love. They are not always our examples, we are not always bmnd to follow tnem ; not more than we are bound to obey some of our Lord's precepts, such as turning the cheek or giving the coat ; not more than we can follow the course of the sun, moon, or stars in the heavens; but, though not always our examples, they are always our standard of right and good; they are raised up" to be monuments and lessons, they remind us of God, they introduce us into the unseen world, they teach us what Christ loves, they trace for us the way whicii leads heavenward. They are to us who see them what wealth, notoriety, rank, and name are to the multitude of men who live in darkness — ■objects of our veneration and of our homage. — Dr. Newman.