or unintelligible hardihood. We have always entertained a deep-
seated suspicion that there is no child who does not think it easy
to be a Saint, so native is sanctity to Catholic childhood. Cardinal
Newman, we believe, exhorted us all to make our sacrifices for God
while we are young before the calculating selfishness of old age
gets hold of us.

Still it may not be quite clear to the inquiring mind why the
desperate difficulties of sainthood can be truthfully viewed in the
light of a breathless adventure. Learn, then, the great secret. The
love of God in the heart is the magical light which touches the
dreariness and hardship of self-thwarting with a splendor of sublime
Romance. You cannot have holiness without love. Holiness can be
either greater nor less than the love of God. Let this love faint
or grow cold, there is at once a loss of holiness, even though it
retain all its external gear. This is a cardinal truth; it is a key
which will solve many a puzzle. It will explain why fanatics and
similar oddities are not Saints, though secular history sometimes
honors them with the title.

Merely concede that the Saint possesses love for God in an
extraordinary measure and degree, and it is the most comprehensible
thing in the world that he will not only accept all tests of his
love readily, but will go forth in search of them with eager
alacrity. First and last and always the only keen satisfaction of
great love, whether human or divine, is to welcome opportunities of
proving itself in some heroic form of courage and endurance. Danger,
suffering, battling against odds, discouragement, overwork, pain of
mind and body, failure, want of recognition, rebuffs, contempt and
persecution, are no longer the subject matter of a strong-jawed