s whose lives are there recorded serve like bright stars to guide
them over the stormy ocean of life to the shores of eternity; while the
history of those who have fallen from grace stands like a beacon light,
warning them to shun the rocks against which a Solomon and a Judas made
shipwreck of their souls.

Our books of piety are adapted to every want of the human soul, and are a
fruitful source of sanctification. Who can read without spiritual profit
such works as the almost inspired _Following of Christ_ by Thomas a
Kempis; the _Christian Perfection_ of Rodriguez; the _Spiritual Combat_ of
Scupoli; the writings of St. Francis de Sales, and a countless host of
other ascetical authors?

You will search in vain outside the Catholic Church for writers comparable
in unction and healthy piety to such as I have mentioned. Compare, for
instance, _Kempis_ with _Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress_, or _Butler's Lives
of the Saints_ with _Foxe's Book of Martyrs_. You lay down _Butler_ with a
sweet and tranquil devotion, and with a profound admiration for the
Christian heroes whose lives he records; while you put aside _Foxe_ with a
troubled mind and a sense of vindictive bitterness. I do not speak of the
_Book of Common Prayer_, because the best part of it is a translation from
our Missal. Protestants also publish _Kempis_, though sometimes in a
mutilated form; every passage in the original being carefully omitted
which alludes to Catholic doctrines and practices.

A distinguished Episcopal clergyman of Baltimore once avowed to me that
his favorite books of devotion were our standard works of piety. In saying
this, he paid a merited and graceful tribute to the superiority of
Catholic spiritual literature.

The Church gives us not only the most pressing motives, but also the most
potent means for our sanctification. These means are furnished by prayer
and the Sacraments. She exhorts us to frequent communion with God by
prayer and meditation, and so imperative is this obligation in our eyes
that we would justly hold ourselves guilty of grave dereliction of duty if
we neglected for a considerable time the practice of morning and evening
prayer.

The most abundant source of graces is also found in the seven Sacraments
of the Church. Our soul is bathed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ at
the font of Baptism, from which we come forth "new creatures." We are then
and there incorporated with Christ, becoming "bone of His bone and fles