the sooner they depart the better for all concerned. If they meet the test with undaunted hearts, the gold will be all the purer that the furnace was heated one seven times more than it was wont to be heated.

XII. Of the Qualities of the Master of Novices The following summary may be made of the qualities that should mark the good Master of Novices.

He must be a man of zeal, tempered by a discretion which will check any impulse to hasty judgment or action. He must have a quick and deep sympathy, but governed by such firmness and courage as will make weakness in dealing with others impossible. He must emulate the surgeon who does not hesitate to inflict the fiercest pain to save his patient; for herein lies truest love. He must be one who has stability of mind and method; a man who has a clear and reasoned spiritual policy, and who keeps his centre. He must understand character and be able to distinguish real attributes of goodness and earnestness from superficial appearances. He must combine boundless faith in the possibilities of human nature with an ability to see the good hidden beneath much that is bad, and he must have a gift for managing souls so as to bring out the good that is in them, and often save them from themselves. This involves, as a matter of course, a rare gift of tact, which after all is but another name for common sense joined to a warm-hearted love for one's fellow-man. His must be a patient and quiet spirit, long-suffering and kind, who, after seeing the good that might be developed

in a soul, does not easily lose hope of its being brought to fruition. In short, those who are set in this important post should lead their novices on, and cherish them with love more than maternal. They ought to be not only discreet, meek and devout, but even devotion, meekness and wisdom itself."

The external work of the Novice Master requires that he have a faculty for detail balanced by a gift of comprehensiveness. Above all, he must be of an unworldly temperament. He who would yield under any circumstances to the temptation to ask, "What will men say? is not the man to train souls in the way of perfection; for, as St. Jerome says, " It is a monk's first virtue to despise the judgments of men, and always to remember the Apostle's words, ' If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.' "3

2

This does not mean that the Master of Novices must be a genius, but he "ought to be of a humble, generous, noble, and universal spirit," in order to inspire those whom he is directing" with a powerful, courageous, exalted and universal devotion." He who lacks conspicuously any one of the qualities described above should not be set to train men for Religion.

If the various qualities necessary to this office were expressed in a single word, this word would be balance. Let a community choose the best-balanced man in it

1 St. Francis de Sales, Visitation Constitutions, xxxiii.

2 Galatians i. 10.

3 St. Jerome, Ep. lxvi, ad Pammachium. Migne, P. L., Tom. xxii, col. 642.

4 St. Francis de Sales, Visitation Constitutions, xxxiii.

to guide the first steps of aspirants towards perfection, and its future will be well secured.

XIII. Of Election to Profession

The method of electing members is arranged by various communities according to their several Constitutions. After an election, the result, whatever it may be, may be reconsidered at any time previous to Profession if the community wish to do so.

The greatest care should be exercised by Superiors lest, even unconsciously, they influence such an election unduly. The members of the community who have votes in the chapter must be allowed the fullest freedom for the expression of their wish, and any undue influence would invalidate the election. This right of freedom in elections seems to go back to the earliest days of organized community life.1

Novices of the same rank take precedence in the novitiate in the order in which they were given the habit, and the same rule governs the order of profession when several are professed at the same time. Those who received the habit first, even if it was but a few minutes earlier, are the first to complete the period of novitiate, and should therefore be professed first. St. Francis de Sales, in a conference given to the Sisters of the Visitation, instructing them how to give their votes in the election of members, sums up for them the characteristics of the good novice worthy to be elected to profession :

"A good vocation," he says, "is nothing else than the firm and constant will of the person called to 1 St. Basil, Regulae Brevius, 112.

serve God in the manner and in the place to which His Divine Majesty calls her; and that is the best sign we can have by which to judge if a vocation is good. But, observe, that when I say a firm and constant will to serve God, I do not say that she must do from the beginning all that has to be done in her vocation with such firmness and constancy as to be exempt from all repugnance, difficulty or disgust in what concerns it. No, I do not say that, and still less that her firmness and constancy must be such as to render her exempt from faults; nor that she must be so firm as never to waver nor vary in her determination to practise the means that may lead her to perfection. It is not, then, by these various emotions and sentiments that we must judge of the firmness and constancy of the will in the good resolutions that have once been made; but by the will remaining firm amidst this variety of different impulses, not quitting the good course it has embraced, though it may feel disgust, or diminution in the love of some virtue, and by its not on that account ceasing to make use of the means that are marked out for acquiring it. So that to have the signs of a good vocation, a sensible constancy is not required, but one that is effective and in the superior part of the soul."1

XIV. Of the Dowry

It has been a custom with communities for women that those who come to Religion bring with them a certain sum of money, enough at least to pay for the

1 St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Conferences, xvii, pp. 262-3.

cost of their maintenance during their postulancy and novitiate. Few, if any, communities, however, would make this a sine qua non for admission. This custom is a just one, as it is but fair that the aspirant should not be a burden on the community during the period when she is free to leave without having made any contribution to its life and work.

A community well-endowed, or one which has a good income from alms, or from the labours of its members, might be guilty of simony should it reject an aspirant solely because she could bring nothing in the way of money with her. Such a community, for the honour of God in Religion, should be willing to receive and support a promising aspirant as an act of charity.

If an aspirant brings a dowry to the community when she enters the novitiate, and leaves before profession, it should be returned, minus the amount expended for her support while she was a novice. In case of death before profession it should be returned to her heirs-at-law. St. Francis de Sales discreetly enjoined upon his Sisters that a list should be made of whatever the novices brought to the monastery with them, which inventory was to be signed by the Superior and by the novice.1 This might in certain cases prevent misunderstanding should a novice leave before profession.

If a Religious after profession leaves the community, either by her own act or by expulsion for cause, she cannot claim the return of any goods she may have brought with her. In countries where there 1 St. Francis de Sales, Visitation Constitutions, xxxvi.