433 for you a day of safety, by calling on you to avenge his glory and his name. Christian warriors, he who gave his life for you, to-day demands yours in return. These are combats worthy of you, combats in which it is glorious to conquer and advantageous

Illustrious knights, generous defenders of the cross, remember the example of your fathers who conquered Jerusalem, and whose names are inscribed in heaven; abandon then the things that perish to gather unfading palms, and conquer a kingdom which has no end.

D°

ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN

NOT put forward the empty excuse of your rawness or want of experience; for barren modesty is not pleasing, nor is that humility praiseworthy that passes the bounds of moderation. Attend to your work; drive out bashfulness by a sense of duty, and act as like master. You are young, yet you are a debtor; you must know that you were a debtor from the day you were born. Will youth be an excuse to a creditor for the loss of his profits? Does the usurer expect no interest at the beginning of his loan? "But," you say, "I am not sufficient for these things." As if your offering were not accepted from what you have, and not from what you have not! Be prepared to answer for the single talent committed to your charge, and take no thought for the rest. "If thou hast much, give plenteously; if thou hast little, do thy diligence gladly to give of that little." For he that is unjust in the least is also unjust in much. Give all, as assuredly you shall pay to the uttermost farthing; but, of a truth, out of what you possess, not out of what you possess not.

Take heed to give to your words the voice of power. You ask, What is that? It is that your words harmonize with your works, that you be careful to do before you teach. It is a most beautiful and salutary order of things that you should first bear the burden you place on others, and learn from yourself how men should be ruled. Otherwise the wise man will mock you, as that lazy one to whom it is labor to lift his hand to his mouth. The Apostle also will reprove you, saying: "Thou who teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?" That speech, also,

which is full of life and power is an example of work, as it

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makes easy what it speaks persuasively, while it shows that can be done which it advises. Understand, therefore, to the quieting of your conscience, that in these two commandments,— of precept and example, the whole of your duty resides. You, however, if you be wise, will add a third, namely, a zeal for prayer, to complete that treble repetition of the Gospel in reference to «< feeding the sheep." You will know that no sacrament of that Trinity is in any wise broken by you, if you feed them by word, by example, and by the fruit of holy prayers. Now abideth speech, example, prayer, these three; but the greatest of these is prayer. For although, as has been said, the strength of speech is work, yet prayer wins grace and efficacy for both work and speech.

I

AGAINST LUXURY IN THE CHURCH

AM astonished to see among churchmen such excess in eating, in drinking, in clothes, in bed-covering, in horse-trappings, in buildings. Economy is now stigmatized as avarice, soberness as austerity, silence as sullenness. On the other hand, laxity is called discretion, extravagance liberality, talkativeness affability, silly laughter a happy wit, pomp and luxury in horses and clothing, respectability; superfluous attention to the building is called cleanliness; and when you countenance one another in these trifles, that forsooth is charity. So ingeniously do ye lay out your money, that it returns with a manifold increase. It is spent that it may be doubled, and plenty is born of profusion. By the exhibition of wonderful and costly vanities, men are excited to give rather than to pray. Some beautiful picture of a saint is shown, and the brighter its coloring the greater is the holiness attributed to it; men run eager to kiss; they are invited to give, and the beautiful is more admired than the sacred is revered. In the churches are placed, not coronæ, but wheels studded with gems and surrounded by lights, which are not less glittering than the precious stones inserted among them. Instead of candlesticks, we see great and heavy trees of brass, wonderfully fashioned by the skill of the artificer, and radiant as much through their jewels as through their own lights. What do you imagine to be the object of all this? The repentance of the contrite, or the admiration of the spectators? O vanity of vanities! But not greater vanity than folly.

R

ON THE CANTICLES

EMEMBER that no spirit can by itself reach unto our minds — that is, supposing it to have no assistance from our body or its own. No spirit can so mingle with us, and be poured into us, that we become in consequence either good or learned. No angel, no spirit can comprehend me; none can I comprehend in this manner. Even angels themselves cannot seize each others" thoughts without bodily organs. This prerogative is reserved for the highest, the unbounded spirit, who alone, when he imparts. knowledge either to angel or to man, needs not that we should have ears to hear, or that we should have a mouth to speak. By himself he is poured in; by himself he is made manifest. Pure himself, he is understood by the pure. He alone needs nothing; alone is sufficient to himself and to all by his sole omnipotent will.

I could not pass over in silence those spiritual feet of God, which, in the first place, it behooves the penitent to kiss in a spiritual manner. I well know your curiosity, which does not willingly allow anything obscure to pass by it; nor indeed is it a contemptible thing to know what are those feet which the Scripture so frequently mentions in connection with God. Sometimes he is spoken of as standing on them, as "We will worship in the place where thy feet have stood." Sometimes as walking, as "I will dwell in them and will walk in them." Sometimes even as running, as "He rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race." If it appear right to the Apostle to call the head of Christ God it appears to me as not unnatural to consider his feet as representing man; one of which I shall name mercy and the other judgment. Those two words are known to you, and the Scripture repeats them in many places. On those feet, fitly moving under one divine head, Christ, born of a woman, he who was invisible under the law, then made Emmanuel ("God with us"), was seen on the earth, and conversed with men.

As regards creatures devoid of sense and reason, who can doubt that God needs them much less? but when they concur in the performance of a good work, then it appears how all things serve him who can justly say: "The world is mine, and the fullness thereof." Assuredly, seeing that he knows the means best adapted to ends, he does not in the service of his creatures seek efficacy, but suitability.

JOHN M. BERRIEN

(1781-1856)

OHN M. BERRIEN was Attorney-General in Andrew Jackson's first cabinet and he was identified with the public life of the country during three of the most important decades of its history. His public service began with his appointment as Judge of the Eastern District of Georgia. He served in the Georgia legislature and was elected to the United States Senate from that State. After his retirement from the cabinet, he was again elected to the United States Senate and in 1846 was re-elected. He was born in New Jersey in 1781 and died in 1856. His speeches still extant contain passages of great, if not of sustained force. He was much admired in his own State and in the South at large, and his utterances will always have a historical interest as reflexes of the feelings of his time.

WITH

CONQUEST AND TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION

(United States Senate, 1850)

гн respect to the war-making power, unquestionably territory might be acquired by conquest, not conveyed by treaty. There may be a continued hostile occupation unsupported by a treaty of cession, which may, by lapse of time, destroy the right of the conquered party, the right of postliminium, and therefore the fruits of the conquest may be enjoyed without treaty. In that state of things, unquestionably, as to territory acquired by the exercise of the war-making power, the power to govern that territory would be deduced from the same

source.

But, sir, speaking generally, almost universally, wars are terminated by treaty, and the conquests are transferred to the acquiring power by cession. The real source and origin of this power, therefore, are to be found in the treaty-making power, and its derivatives. It might be implied as a necessary incident to the power to make treaties, but it is more generally the result

of express stipulations made in the exercise of that power. I shall be understood by a brief explanation, and by the application of it to the case before us. By the power which you have to enter into treaties with foreign nations, you have acquired this Mexican territory. If it were indispensable to you to resort to the principle that the right to acquire gives you the right to govern, I agree that the right might be deduced from that source. But this is not necessary; for there is in the treaty an express stipulation for the exercise of the power, which is equivalent to a grant, under which we are not only authorized, but bound to exercise it, since treaties, when they are not in conflict with the Constitution, and when they are ratified by the competent authorities of the nation, become the supreme law of the land. In those treaties-in all of those which are treaties of cession the right to receive the ceded territories is accompanied by the express stipulation to govern, by the stipulation to protect them in their persons and in their property, which can alone be done by government. The power, then, to govern a territory which is acquired by cession from a foreign nation is a power deduced from the treaty by which that territory is acquired; which treaty, upon its ratification, becomes the supreme law of the land.

power to organThey were, first, And what was subject of the

And now, sir, I think you may see what is the reason that there is no express grant in the Constitution to organize Territorial Governments. That reason may be found in the fact that there was no necessity for its existence there. Cast your recollection back to the period when the Constitution was adoptedconsider what were the objects upon which this ize territorial governments could be exercised. the unlocated territory of the United States. that? The great Northwestern Territory, the famous ordinance of 1787. Now, in respect to that territory, it was a portion of the State of Virginia, subject to the sovereign law of Virginia. While Virginia held it, it was competent for her to organize a government there; and when the sovereignty of Virginia was transferred to the Confederation, if the Confederation had had the power to receive the transfer, the sovereign. power which had been theretofore in Virginia might have been exercised by the Confederation. There is, I presume, scarcely a lawyer of the present day, who supposes that the Congress of the Confederation had the power to do what they did. But validity was given to their act-not by the act of Congress adapting the