ing industry in the Shetlands. Time is of the essence of business, and the fish must come to hand fresh. Consequently only half the price per "cran" is paid for such as are landed after 10 p. m. The herrings are at once taken in hand by the fish-girls who, bare-armed and barelegged, their hands and wrists covered with scales, look like a rather attractive set of Macbeth witches superintending an incantation. They clean the fish, salt them, pack them in barrels, fasten them up, and set them in rows ready to be shipped for the Baltic. The Shetland fish are nearly all consumed in Russia and Sweden.

In one of the photographs is shown a landing-stage on which empty barrels are lying. Sometimes this particular quay is covered by a herd of Shetland ponies awaiting shipment, or by flocks. of little Shetland sheep about to be sent to the mainland. The hills beyond are. those of the Island of Bressay. The herring-gulls on the rocks show the tameness of the birds, which in these islands, as at Scilly, are scarcely ever molested. In the former islands they are protected mainly at the wish of the

proprietor; but around the herring-curing towns the gulls play so useful a part that they are almost indispensable. They act as "beachcombers" and wave-cleaners, picking up from sea and shore the enormous quantity of refuse, amounting to thousands of tons yearly, left after the cleaning of the fish. Here every attitude of flight may be studied at close quarters. The positions of the birds' wings in the landing-stage photograph are most remarkable for their variety of attitude and truth to nature. The gulls destroy a certain amount of immature fish, and certainly do some mischief among the salmon smolts going down the rivers to the sea; but the harm they do is nothing in comparison with that wrought by other fish. At the mouth of the Tweed, for instance, are thousands of a species of fish called, locally, "podlies." Many of these when caught are found to have from six to ten salmon smolts in their stomachs. The enormous number of cormorants around the Shetland Islands no doubt destroy great quantities of fish ; but the resources of the sea are such that the number of the latter is not appreciably affected.

GI

VII.

HE PERFECTS GOD'S GLORY.

T was not, however, fitting that everything about Him should be humble and obscure, lest He could not express, over and above all other creatures, the Divine perfection. Christ was born that He might perfect God's glory. And, in fact, He expresses this glory in the highest degree. He expresses it in His being. He expresses it in His work as man. For although His nature and actions, in regard to His own being, are in every sense human, yet His nature and actions are also those of a Divine Person, because the personality of the nature and works of man in Jesus Christ is the Person of the Word. It is impossible to conceive in a created being anything greater or more wonderful than that man, still remaining man in his essence and in his actions, be, by reason of his personality, Divine or, as a theologian might style Him, THEANDRIKOS, that is, God, yet

man.

He

In the motions of His soul, He is the highest expression of God's glory, as though in a living temple. Never did spirit, human or angelic, show forth and magnify God's glory so eminently as Jesus Christ, by His knowledge, His love, His words and His works. magnified God in Himself; and that God be glorified and exalted in the world, He extolled Him by His public life and preaching, and He willed to offer Himself to Him by cruel sufferings on the cross, thus to glorify the Lord of life and death.

It must, therefore, be said that He Who perfected the manifestation of God in the midst of creatures, in a manner the most solemn and most glorious, signifying

first of all everything that God is, and our nothingness, is the Infant Jesus. And hence it was that in the last moment of His life, turning to God the Father and calling upon Him, He could truly say: "I have glorified Thee on earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do."

VIII.

HE IS THE CROWN OF THE UNIVERSE.

While Jesus is He Who completes God's glory, that glory under which the Omnipotent lies hidden and by which He manifests Himself in a manner other than as God, that same Jesus is truly the Crown of the Universe. Since God, as we read in Holy Writ, wished to magnify Him in Whom His glory was to be revealed, He exalted Him and placed Him over all the works of His hands; and gave Him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend on earth and in hell, giving all creation to Him for a footstool. From this we gather that Jesus is the first-fruits, the Head, the Crown and final completion of the created order. In fact, when we examine the Scriptures we can distinguish, in the universality. of being, three terms: the first, the order of those predestined to eternal life; the second is Jesus, their Head; and the third is God, their Creator and ultimate End.

Now in these three terms there is a most beautiful order. And since all things, God and Jesus excepted, are ways and means for perfecting the order of the elect, that order, therefore, serves to complete the exaltation and glorification of Jesus. Finally, Jesus Christ, together with the elect, by forming, so to speak, one body, augments God's glory. And then each and every

creature, by the being it possesses, by the activity it exhibits, and by its marvelous composition, is, to him who contemplates it, an act manifesting God's glory. Yet God's living glory is as truly reflected in the order of finite things as by the blessed spirits and in them: spirits who go to form the mystical body whose Head Jesus is, and their Crown as well. "For all things are yours," says St. Paul, speaking to the faithful at Corinth, "whether it be the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, for all are yours; and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's."* "To Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus."t.

History and reason confirm this teaching of the Scriptures. Although during the lapse of centuries He has opposed the furious and unceasing attack of the passions, Jesus, with His Church, is gloriously sustained and made known by His own innate power. All things, then, here below, be they prosperous or adverse, make for the glory of the Church and of Jesus. And it is a fact, historically undeniable, that Jesus has been a sign both of resurrection and of destruction. Because, as we have said. before, no one can approach with a worthy intention to receive of the Saviour's bounty without growing in holiness and truth; and, on the other hand, no one can withdraw from Him without being made poorer thereby. This law binds both nations and individuals.

And, in fact, it could not be otherwise, since, even by the standards of reason, the man never was, nor is, neither will be, in whom is found an example of perfection higher than in Jesus. Jesus, as Renan himself confesses, "will never be surpassed." No, among the names of good men and great, there is none on earth in which mankind can more readily or reasonably confide than in that of Jesus. Finally,

Jesus is the Prince and Head of the created order, the perfection of all things. And it were meet that all things should terminate in Him, that when all things are, as it were, summarized in Him, they may be with Him subjected to God, and God shall be all in all. Then all creation, especially when its mission is fulfilled, or on the way towards fulfillment, will be a sublime hymn, a canticle of glory, a resonance of God's providence, love, and power; and in their universal harmony the dominant and final note will be the Christ-Child.

IX.

HE IS THE HIGHEST EXPRESSION OF GOD'S LOVE FOR MAN.

We must now consider the ChristChild as the highest symbol of those things which form the foundation and are, as it were, the very heart of the Christian life. This symbol corresponds to a real need of mankind. For man here below is held a prisoner by the bonds of imagination, and his intellectual activity can not manifest itself except through the imagination and the senses; therefore he knows the invisible only through things visible. Thus we have, in the nativity of the Word Incarnate, a wise purpose; to exemplify under the sensible veil of an assumed humanity, and by His life, those invisible bonds which unite God to the soul and the soul to God in mutual relationship.

Of these bonds the first and greatest is God's love for man; "God so loved the world." Words can not express how necessary it is for man to know that he is surrounded and protected by God's love. Most miserable, indeed, is the state of that soul who does not believe in the existence of God, or, if he admits that He does exist, believes that He is enclosed and concentrated within Himself and cares not for us. A soul in such a state knows neither whence it came

1 Cor. xv, 28.

nor why it exists: it feels itself aban-. doned to its own weakness and vanity, with no hope of aid either from within or without. Whatever the soul does, whether it be wholly engrossed in visible things or in a sense of its own sufficiency, yet it always realizes that life is in reality only a succession of moments. full of affliction, without permanence and without reward, although not perceiving that its end is darkness and annihilation.

On the contrary, he who believes that God exists, that He is good, that by reason of His love He is a giver of good things, that He is the Creator both of the order of nature and of the order of grace, and that His love is full of tenderness towards man that He may ask a return of love-who so believes, knowing that he is surrounded and protected by God's living love, lives bravely, and in peace. Though he live amid briars and thorns and be annoyed by every adverse fate, he yet feels confident that he is not alone; nothing casts him down, nothing disheartens him. And then the inexplicable scene of the world, when judged by this criterion of Divine love, unfolds itself before his eyes in an order of justice and mercy; and his soul rests serenely and with a holy confidence on God. "And we have known, and have believed the charity which God. hath to us. God is charity; and he that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him."* It was fitting, then, that this deep and solid base of human life, although itself invisible, should be visibly manifested to us.

Certainly each and every part of creation is an effect of God's love and manifestly demonstrates that love, the the works of grace even more than the works of nature. But what is that work of God which, better than all others, signifies God's love for men? It is the Infant Jesus. Since this Divine love which has given us Jesus is not only a love which

* 1 St. John iv, 16.

creates and gives being and makes us by adoption sons of grace, but it is a love which creates personal union of the Word with human nature, and confides to God Incarnate the mission of priest and victim for mankind, therefore Jesus is the most signal and wondrous token of God's love for man. "By this the charity of God appeared to us,' says St. John the Evangelist, "because God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world that we may live by Him." Such is Jesus Christ for the Christian; but for the worldly man, who has never considered the treasure of grace hidden in the bosom of God nor the dignity of his own soul which is His image, all this seems incredible, nay, mere folly. Truly, then, does God love man; and in the mystery of His Incarnation He has exhausted, if we may dare say so, His wisdom, His power, and His love. The Incarnation is the highest expression of God's infinite love for man.

X.

HE IS THE EXEMPLIFICATION OF MAN'S NOTHINGNESS IN THE SIGHT OF GOD.

If the Incarnate Word was born as a concrete and sensible exemplification of what God principally is in relation to man, He was born also as a manifestation of that which man is before God— nothingness.

The annihilation of which we speak is not inaction and apathy, nor does it express the infinite distance that exists between the Creator and His creature; but it is a real recognition of what man is in relation to God, that is to say, nothing. And in truth, man in himself, although he is really distinct from God, is nothing. There was a time when he did not exist, and whatever he is now is due not to himself but to God. Consequently, if God had not first created man, man would

1 St. John iv, 9.

have remained in his original nothingness. "My substance is as nothing before Thee." And whatever any man, or any other finite creature may be, or possess, all has been received from God; and consequently he is a Divine dependant. "And my substance is with Thee."*

This recognition, when it is sincere, determines, in the moral order, the true and original relation of man to God, which is that of a humble subject to an absolute master. It assigns to man his ultimate end and gives him a supreme rule for his acts; for God is Lord of all and their ultimate end, so man should direct all his acts and his very being towards God. It establishes that true worship of the Almighty which is the recognition of His supreme and universal dominion, and our subjection and entire sacrifice to Him. It reconciles man to God, and is his justification; for it places man in a just relation to his Creator. Verily, it may be said that the recognition of our own nothingness and of all that God is, is the first law of morality and religion. Now Jesus, who is the beginning and the end of all that appertains to the religious and moral order, expresses even from His birth this law of nothingness; for He takes the form of a servant, accepts from the beginning, death, yea, the death of the Cross.†

XI.

HE IS THE PLEDGE OF GOOD-WILL TO

MAN.

When man humbles himself before God and is subject to Him, he recognizes that he sprang from God, that God is his highest good, the source, the destiny of all he possesses. And the human will thus informed and inspired, believes that God is the bestower of that

Ps. xxxviii, 6. *Ps. xxxviii, 8. † Phil. ii, 5-7.

good-will by which the rational being consecrates himself to his Creator.

Good-will is an expression of the first and basic principle of man's religious and moral perfection, and the pledge of his eternal salvation.

Where will exists, there is found the exercise of the two highest faculties of man, the intellect and the will. Where there is a will which is good, or rather perfect, having a fulness and integrity of existence, there the intellect and the will are principally occupied in the manifestation of the love of God; for He is absolute Being, the principal of every intellectual and moral good, and of every law that deals with the rational and voluntary motions of the soul. Good-will, therefore, as it conforms itself and is submissive to God's supreme truth, goodness, and justice, loves and adores Him, and is on this account a moral and religious bond.

It forms a mystic union, an ineffable communication between the consciousness of God's love and man's. It is an intimate penetration of holy familiarity, of light divine, and love celestial. It is a relation of friendship and sonship expressed by God Himself with these

words: "And now I no longer call you servants, but My sons and friends."

Good-will cannot remain shut up in itself; it must diffuse itself. It influences all the motions of mankind, both intellectual and animal; it purifies the base and egotistic aspirations, and elevates them in the degree in which it corresponds to the impulses of divine love. And, then, in accordance with the impulses of charity, it turns itself outward upon its neighbor, laboring in prayer and work to hasten the kingdom of God.

Who can say what heights this goodwill may attain! Borne up by its union, in perfect conformity with its Creator, it may ascend even to God; for it is warmed by His charity and nourished