give examples and proofs. However, there is a decided disagreement between the converts and Mr. Gladstone; for they say and I have heard many of them—that they have gained a mental and moral freedom that they never knew before, have obtained a firmer footing for their loyalty, have a keener appreciation to distinguish between what is good and bad in modern thought, and a higher comprehension of the movement of God. through ancient history. Whether their testimony or that of Mr. Gladstone should prevail must be left to the reader. I can only say that that of the converts is conscientiously given, and that not a few of them have distinguished themselves in the philosophic investigation of modern thought, in the cultivation of science and art, or in exploring ancient history. It would go hard with facts if they could be destroyed by declamation.

I have ventured to say already that Mr. Gladstone seems never to have thought deeply of the nature of mental and moral freedom. It is easy for a politician to confound civil with mental, political with moral, freedom; but they are in character very different. Political and civil freedom are of an external more than of an internal nature. They are concerned in removing limits and restraints from speech and action, in diffusing political power and civil influence through the people, and in controlling as well as directing the civil government. By the very nature of mind and will, mental and moral liberty are of a different order. The object of the mind, what sets it free from its narrow egotism of thought, is truth. The object of the will, what sets it free, is moral good. Man is not made for himself,

but for a truth, and for a good of which truth is the bright reflection, and to which there is no limit. ‘If the truth set you free,' says Truth in person, 'then are you truly free.' Put a man into a solitary cell; leave him in his isolation; let him be one of those who hold no converse with the spiritual world, and the question will be, how long must it be before his mind break down? Unless he turn to God, he has lost all freedom, civil, political, bodily, mental, and moral. In losing the two last he suffers from mental and moral inanition. Put a holy, enlightened Christian solitary in the same position. In his privation of bodily, social, and political liberty, which were all things to that first solitary, his mental and moral freedom still remain to him, his mind will soar in freedom unto unmeasured regions of truth, his heart will go forth in love unto unspeakable depths of good. The Catholic, even the convert, who makes his annual eight days of spiritual retirement, understands these things.

A man is bodily free in proportion to the extent of territory over which he can freely move. Had he the bird's privilege as well, to take to the air, he would be doubly free. So is it with the mind. It is free in proportion to the extent of certain and assured truth into which it can freely enter, over which it can freely move. The will, again, is morally free according to the extent and height and greatness of moral good that through a loving heart the will can securely embrace. In the very root and basis of the soul moves the appetite for truth, and the moral good that truth reflects and brightens. Only when drawn forth by this truth and moral good, which God presents, can he get out of the contracted

cell of his subjective nature, and advance towards this truth, especially that of God's magnificent revelation, and enter into the foretaste of that good which this revelation has made known. This movement, lower in the natural order, immeasurably higher in the supernatural order, constitutes the mental and moral freedom of man. 'If the truth shall set you free, then are you

truly free.'

Whilst still moving hesitatingly through the shallows of doubt and of uncertain opinion no man is free. He is struggling through conjectures or following half lights towards that certainty of truth and peace in good which he hopes in time will make him free; or he gives up the search and sinks back into indifference. The man who, intent on other thoughts, has lost his way and got benighted, is so far from mental freedom that he hesitates, doubts, conjectures, and frets; but on regaining his path he recovers his freedom, and makes progress towards the good before him.

But against freedom of will, as of mind, stand the allied powers of sense; their indulgence, and the passions they awaken, absorb and degrade both the moral and mental forces; make the mind's light servile to the imagination, which, however God designed it to be the servant of truth and its illustrator, grows sordid from sensuality and inflammable from passion; and thus evilly stimulated, it perverts from the truth and absorbs into error and evil the action of the will. Another condition of mental and moral freedom, therefore, is to keep the senses, their appetites, and the inflammable imagination down in order and subjection. Nor is this all; deeper within the man is the pride that

exalts the subjective self over the truth and good for which the man was made. This false and deceptive self-exaltation draws the mind from truth, the will from law, and needs the curb of humility and obedience to the One True Good, whose authority, that it may be ever at hand for the exercise of these virtues, is set before our very senses in the human depositaries of His truth and law.

Wherefore, obedience to truth is mental freedom; resistance to truth is the loss of liberty. Obedience to the authority through which God brings us the truth, and to the supreme law that marks the way towards truth, is moral liberty; disobedience to that authority and law is the loss of moral freedom. In what lies the secret strength of obedience? In that a more authoritative and stronger will than our own brings ours into action; in that two wills combine to bring up the one that is oppressed with its egotism, authority and law being its security for right direction. Thus, by obedient habits, is the child trained to strength of will; and thus, in the things of God, where man is yet a child, does the authority of the Church draw him up to the unchangeable regions of truth and divine good. This being so, and God having in His Church wonderfully provided the channels of light and grace in her Sacraments, of safety in her infallible teaching, and of self-denial, humility, and obedience, in her ministerial authority, it is obvious to any one who comprehends these principles that the Church is the true home of mental and moral freedom; but far more obvious is it to those who hold practical possession of them within the Church herself.

And if the field of the mind hath received the whole compass of truth made known by God to man in its marvellous unity, then in contemplating that truth, article by article, doctrine by doctrine, each illuminating all, and all illuminating each, new beauties of truth incessantly spring upon the mind, to the delight, solace, and freedom of the contemplating spirit. But the Catholic religion holds possession of all the revealed truth,-added to all the natural truth that God has given to man,-whilst elsewhere it is broken into fragments and scattered in parts through numerous sects and divisions.

In like manner the supreme law shapes out with authority the boundaries between good and evil, and leads us in the direction of moral good; and the obedient following of that law is the condition of moral freedom. But that man might not lose his way, be perplexed with doubts, or left to the hesitating and uncertain lights of his own judgment and opinion, where there should be certain faith and belief, Christ our Lord appointed an authority, to whom both the truth and the law were committed, to teach them with divine authority to the end of time; and to hear and obey that authority in a spirit loyal to God's inward movements is to gain mental and moral freedom. That these are gained, and in a way contrasting wonderfully with their previous states of mind, all earnest converts bear witness.

To the Catholic Church, in his earlier days, Mr. Gladstone gave a magnificent testimony, a complete justification to her converts. In his Church Principles he carps, indeed, at many details, not so much of what