lot, and, when
I found them, all repulsion perished in the flow of infinite compassion
which I felt. I prayed with fallen women, sought them in their
miserable abodes, fought with them for their own souls, and O exquisite
moment!--I saw the soul awake in them, I saw in their tear-filled eyes
the look that Jesus saw in the eyes of Magdalene. On my last Sabbath
in London before leaving for America, one of these rescued girls, now
as pure of look and manner as those most sweetly nurtured, called at my
house to give my daughter a little present bought with the first money
she had earned by honest toil in many years. On the day we sailed
another said a special mass for us, and held the day sacred for prayer,
in the convent where her bruised life had been nursed back to moral
beauty. Love had triumphed in them, and I had brought them that love.
I had lived the life, I had tried to do something that Jesus did, and
behold Jesus had come back to me, and I knew His presence with me even
as Francis knew it when he washed the leper's sores, and Catherine when
she gathered to her bosom the murderer's guilty head, drew from him the
confession of his sin, and whispered to him softly of the Lamb of God.

There is no sense of unreality in religion now for me. There are no
weary uncertainties, no melancholy sense of beating the air in what I
teach. He who will try to live the life of Jesus for a single day, and
in such few particulars as may lie within his scope, will at once
realize the presence of Jesus with him. In the practice of love comes
the manifestation of the Lover, the drawing of the soul into the bosom
of that Christ who was the very love of God, and the exchange of our
poor proud carnal heart for the tender heart that yearned over
Magdalene, was moved with compassion for the people, and broke upon the
Cross.

A LOVER OF MEN

_THE CRADLE CROSS_

_"What shall I ask for Thee, my child?"
Said Mary Mother, stooping dawn
Above the Babe all undefiled.
"O let Him wear a kingly crown."_

_From wise men's gifts she wrought the crown,
The robe inwove with many a gem,
Beside the Babe she laid them down.
He wept, and would have none of them._

_"What shall I get for Thee, my Child?"
Unto the door she slowly went,
And wove a crown of thorn-boughs wild,
He took it up, and was content._

_Upon the floor she gathered wood,
And made a little Cross for Him;
The Child