GRAINS OF GOLD

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 6, 7 February 1907, Page 3

GRAINS OF GOLD

HOPE ON !

'Be of good heart ; ? tis I ; he- not afraid ! ' So spake the Saviour when, in dark night lone, He walked upon the billows, bearing aid Across the storm-swept sea unto His own, • • Be not afra«Ld ! ' Thus in our' direst strait a gracious form, A vision fair of light, our hearts shall cheer, Oh ! swiftly comes the calm, when,' mid -the storm, That Voice Divine outringeth loud and clear : 1 Be not afratUl ! ' — ' Austral Light.' If all the forests were pleasure panks, and all the isles were fortunate isles, and ,all the fields, were Elysian, and all eyes were fuli of joy, oh ! then—., Buteno ; then the Infinite Being must have assured us that such felicity would- be perpetual. But now that so many houses are houses of mourning, so many fields are fields of battle, so many faces are pajle, so many eyes are dulled with tears and " closed— when v things are thus' how can the tomb b"e the : ' end of it all ? Prosperity begets self-satisfaction and self-confidence. God and his favor's ~ do not seem so intftspensa-ble when -we feel that we have all the world can supply, , and the danger of grojwing, forgetful of Him is very great. This by no means implies that the soul which is increased with the world's goods may not be am uncompromis- ' ing. Christian,, bufc only that" prosperity tests one's higher life at. every point, and that those who have weathered all the { shoals and miseries 'of - ebb and. tide ,may be swept out to sea and lost on the rising waves of the - flood tide.

Pope Pius X. has . conferred the Cross c Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice ' upon. WilHain Bulfin, editor of the ' Southern Cross • of Buenos Aires, Argentina. - Mr. Bulfin is Irish, and his sturdy defence of Catholic interests against the attacks of Latin American Liberalism, socialism, and anarchism has won him the. recognition which he so highly deserves.