always it makes the choice, it chooses, and He chose us. S. Augustine says: God made man for Himself." Well, He was perfect, why did He want them for Himself? Because of the overflowing of His Sacred Heart. And having chosen us, as love always will, He devoted Himself to us, for devotion. is the second course in love, as you all know from the holy love in your hearts. It is devotion. If you love your friend, you will be the devoted friend.

And then the third attribute of love is this: Union which is the crown-So the Master says: "I go to prepare a place for you .. that where I am, there ye may be also." He wants us to be in heaven.

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Who for our sakes." Don't forget, Don't forget, "for our sakes." And I tell you straight: if you want a sweet little motto to stir you to a good Christian act, here it is three words-" For Christ's sake." If you have a picture in your room of the dear Master dying, perhaps you have put underneath: "For my sake." Well, write in your heart this: "For Christ's sake." And do all the good you do "for Christ's sake," and abstain from doing what is wrong "for Christ's sake," "Who though He was rich, for our sakes became poor.”

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And then the last-for I have no time: the last is "that we through His poverty might be rich"-rich not with paltry pelf, but with grace. What do you think are the two best gifts given to mortal man? "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ "-" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost"; and immortality too, for to mortal man, to dying man, there is no gift like immortality-and He it is who brought grace and 1 S. John xiv. 2-3.

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immortality too. By His glorious Gospel we preach immortality. Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?" 1 That is our Gospel. We are sons of God and heirs of

immortality.

We are strangers and pilgrims here on earth, but we look for a better country, a heavenly, and God is not ashamed to be called our God, and has prepared for us a city (see Heb. xi. 16). My brethren, don't let the sordid worldliness by which we are surrounded keep you down. We are all of the earth earthy, and lose sight of the Lord of heaven.

And last of all, dear brethren, might I say this to you? If you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ Who was rich and for your sake became poor, don't any of you enjoy your comforts at Christmas unless you have thought of the poor. Don't sit in your warm room over the fire, smoking your pipe, or reading your paper, and care nothing for the poor who have got no home. Don't, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who though He was rich, for your sakes He became poor that you through His poverty might be made rich; and may the sweet Gospel text ring in your hearts again and again.

1 S. John xi. 26.

CHRISTMAS MORNING

"But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law."-Gal. iv. 4.

CHRIST was born on Christmas Day, so we sing and so we say. The 25th of December will do just as well as any other date. Why not? We who live under the conditions of minutes, hours, days and months and years, we must have our dates. Let it be so. Christmas Day is the 25th of December. That is man's computation-that is not God's. The date with God is this: "When the fulness of the time was come." God Who lives in eternity alone can know "the fulness of the time." And when in the eternal

wisdom of God the fulness of time came for which the ages had been waiting, then that hour struck which never can be struck again, and GOD the SON leapt out of Eternity into Time across the hills of frankincense and the mountains of myrrh, and was born amongst us-born of a woman, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.

And, brethren, just let me stop one moment this morning to say, mark you, "the fulness of the time." God's dealings with His own people are not according to the dates of man, but according to His own dates, when the fulness of time comes. When at the marriage of Cana of Galilee our Blessed Lady spoke to Him, He said, "Mine hour is not yet come." 1 When it 1 S. John ii. 4.

had come, He turned the water into wine. And when the fulness of time comes to God's chosen people-to you who are His people-when God's time is ready, He will come. He will always come according to His own time; "He will come and save us." 1 Remember how the Bible ends: "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. . . . Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." 2 It is always the same all through your life-God's time-and He will come.

And the next reflection I want you to make on the Mystery is this: that the operation of the Holy Spirit of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary was the work of the Holy Trinity. God sent forth His Son into the world by the overshadowing of the Father, by the coming upon the Blessed Virgin of the Holy Ghost. That holy Thing which was born in her womb was the Eternal Son of God. That is what we believe, and that is what we teach. God, born of a woman. That Body with which the Son of God hung upon the Cross and died for us was formed by God in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There is no body created on earth but what God created it-" God giveth it a body." The tiniest insect has the whole Trinity behind it. God formed the body of Redemption in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

And what is this practically to us?-just another pause over this.-God Himself formed the Body of the Eternal Son that He might live in time, the Body of Redemption, in the womb of the Blessed Virgin

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1 See Isa. XXv. 9.

2 Rev. xxii. 17 and 20. 31 Cor. xv. 38.

Mary. And He Who gave the Son of God a body for time can give us a body for eternity. He called Him out of eternity to live in time and gave Him a body. He calls us out of time into eternity, and gives to us, the sons of God, an immortal body. All our faith is grounded upon the Incarnation of the Son of God.

And now, lastly, for I cannot keep you this morning, they all tell you, and you read in the papers, that a great national crisis is coming upon us in the new year. Don't wince, I am not going to speak politics from the pulpit. I am not going to degrade my ministry by the introduction of politics, by turning the Altar of God into hustings, or the pulpit into a political platform. Every man must vote according to his conscience-not what I think, or any one else thinks, but what he thinks right before God. And let no man meddle with another man's conscience. But I can say this: in the interests of your heart and your soul, be for ever on the side of God, and of the family, on the side of Mary and Joseph and the Babe in the midst. Stand up and do all you can for religion in the family. It is for the mother to name for the child first the Name of God, and it is for the mother to keep the hearth and the home warm with the love of God. I would that the Mother and the Child were ever in every house ever since Mary brought into the world in her arms the Salvation of the human race. Be on the side of religion in the family. If religion dies out of the family, it dies out of the heart of man, and if the faith dies from the heart of man all is lost. And you hear ever and anon the growl of divorce, when parent is separated from parent, and the children torn away. Why, even the tigress in