aims and exalting her views, lead her to prospects of the most desirable happiness, which God in his infinite goodness designed "for him that shall overcome, who shall eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of his God."*

SERMON X.

FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY.

A Sermon preached at the Profession of a Nun.

Blessed are they who dwell in thy house, O Lord, they shall praise thee for ever. Psalm lxxxiii. 5..

SUCH is the ecstatic exclamation of the royal prophet, after he had retired from the prophane conversation of a splendid court that he might commune with his heart and his God. He then does not constitute his happiness in the number of his victories, in the glitter of royal grandeur, in his abundance, prosperity, and worldly pleasures, but in being of the number of the servants of the Most High, to stand continually in his presence, and to sing to his name incessant canticles of praise and alleluiahs. And again aspiring after the same house of God, he exclaims in the same psalm, How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts, my soul longeth, and fainteth for the courts of the Lord.

That such are the sentiments, beloved sister in Christ Jesus, with which his divine spirit has filled your heart, your conduct from your earliest

years gives me every reason to hope. Born to prosperity, indulged by affectionate parents, esteemed by numerous friends, and flattered with the hope of enjoying all the fleeting pleasures which dazzle the votaries of a deluded and deluding world, enlightened by the rays of divine light, you viewed all these apparent advantages in their true light, and found them to be so many stumbling-blocks to your eternal happiness.— Guided by the spirit of the Most High, you found that solitude is the only school of heavenly wisdom: as the Lord has declared by his prophet Ozee, when speaking of a pure soul, he says, "I will lead her into the wilderness, and there I will speak to her heart."* There, says the mellifluous St. Bernard, we enjoy the effusions of celestial consolations. There, continues this admirable doctor, the saints have received the precepts of the great legislator of the world, whose voice, which resembles the sweet-zephyrs, according to the sacred text, cannot be understood unless in the silence of the tongue and of the heart. It is to this excellent school, that the example of the Son of God has brought the most renowned solitaries of the church, such as Jeroms, the Pauls, the Anthonies, and Hilarions, who have learned by their own experience, that the moun tains shall drop down sweetness, and the hills drop with milk.

This heavenly solitude in the house of your God; the holy consolations of a religious retreat, you have preferred to all the tinsel happiness of the world, and the vanity of its promises. Happy! you have often exclaimed with the royal prophet, whose words I have chosen for my text, happy those who dwell in thy house, and who,

-Ozce, ii. 14.

sheltered from the perils and seductions of a corrupting world, are employed day and night singing thy praise, and acknowledging thy eternal mercies! How lovely thy tabernacle, O Lord of Hosts! my soul longeth and fainteth after the courts of the Lord! The day, the long wished for day, beloved sister, in which your longing is to be gratified, is at length arrived; this is the day which is to associate you to these heavenly virgins, who dwell in this the house of their Lord, and lead in it the life of angels on earth. Well then may you exclaim in the words of the sacred Scripture," This for me is the day of the Lord, I shall rejoice in it and be glad."* This is the day which I have long wished to see; I see it and am overwhelmed with rapture. This is the happy day in which you are to consecrate, by the most solemn engagements, your heart to your God, and all your affections undivided, as he requires them. With reason then may you say with the spouse in the Canticles, "My beloved comes to possess me, and I possess him."+ For this is the day in which the Lord says to you by the mouth of the prophet Ozee, "And I will betroth thee to me in righteousness and in judgment, and in loveliness and in mercies. I will espouse thee to me for ever: and I will espouse thee to me in justice and judgment, and in mercy, and in commiserations. And I will espouse thee to me in faith, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord." This is to you the memorable day,, which you should never forget, and in which Í address you in the words of Moses to the people of Israel. "Remember O Israel, and never forget that thou hast chosen this day the Lord to be thy God, and to walk in his ways, and to keep + Canticles, ii. 16.. 1. Ozee, ii. 19, 20..

*Psalm cxvii.

his commandments, and to hearken to his voice. And the Lord has chosen thee this day to be his peculiar people: and thou shalt say thou art my God."*

But need I tell you never to forget it? No. You who from your infancy to this day have been versed in the school of Christ, can never forget his mercies in snatching you from the enticements of the vanity of the world; a world which you have long despised, and from which your af fections have been long alienated. For you, who, favoured by the predilection of Heaven, I have nothing to fear. For you, who, after two years penitential exercises, performed with exemplary fervour in this house, I have nothing more to desire, than that you persevere in the same fervour to your last breath. No: it is not for the instruction of that votary of penance, that I stand this day in this sacred place. It is for yours, followers of a deluded world! who are here assembled more from motives of curiosity, than the impulse of devotion. Let me intreat you to turn from the object now before you, to inspect your own situation, while I form a contrast between the vanity of the world, and the solid advantages of a religious life. Let the ambitious man here learn, where ambition is contemptible, that the objects which are to him of such magnitude, are in the eyes of religion the toys of folly. Let the vain woman recollect, that her unwearied attention to the display of her beauty, is dedicating her time to the idle purpose of setting off to advantage a perishable flower; for, as the Scripture says, "All flesh shall fade as grass, and as the leaf that springeth out on a green tree."+ "All flesh is

*

Ozee, ii. 24.

† Ecclesiasticus, xiv. 18.