have not thought it worth while to spend much time in denouncing him.  It has a good deal to say of the danger, not so much of wealth, as of prosperity in general:  “Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and prosperous ease were in her.”  When we find ourselves in a satisfied and comfortable home life, so comfortable that we find it difficult to get up to a week-day Mass, and disinclined to go out to a service after dinner, we need watching.

And the best watchman is oneself; and the best method of self-examination is by the Cross.  Is there any sense in which we can be said to be following our Lord on the Sorrowful Way?  Have we taken up the Cross to go after Him, or are we assuming that we can just as well drift along with the crowd of those who only look on?  We all need from time to time to consider the Catholic teaching as to mortification and self-discipline.  I am quite aware that to insist on this is not the way of popularity, but nevertheless I learned a long time ago that about the only way that a priest can take if he wishes to be saved is the way of unpopularity.  And therefore I am going to insist that the practice of rigorous self-discipline is essential to any healthy Christian life.  We cannot dispense ourselves from this, for the mere fact that we are dispensing ourselves is the proof that we need that upon which we are turning our back.  Briefly, what I mean is that the assumption of the Cross by a Christian means that he is taking into his life, voluntarily, personal acts of self-sacrifice which he offers to our Lord as the evidence and the means of his own Cross-bearing.

The unruliness of our nature can only be kept in order by continual acts of self-discipline.  We, no doubt, recognise the need of the discipline of the passions, but our theory, so far as we can be said to have one, would seem to be that the discipline of the passions means resistence to special temptations as they arise.  We may no doubt sin through the passions, and therefore we need a minimum of watchfulness to meet temptations which come our way.  I submit that such a way of conducting life is quite sufficient to account for the vast amount of failure we witness or, perhaps, experience.  When from time to time the country gets alarmed about its health, when it is threatened with some epidemic such as influenza, the papers are full of medical advice the sum of which is you cannot dodge all the disease germs that are in the air, but you can by a vigorous course of exercise and by careful diet, keep yourself in a state of such physical soundness that the chances are altogether favourable for your withstanding the assaults of disease.  No doubt the vast majority of people prefer not to follow this advice.  A considerable number of them resort to various magic cults, such as letting sudden drafts of cold air in upon the inoffensive bystander with a view to exorcising the germs.  But it remains that the medical advice is sound:  it amounts to saying, “Keep yourself in the best physical condition possible and you will run the minimum chance of being ill.”