Christ it has ever been the practice of the Catholic Church to maintain a sacred reserve: these are to be contemplated in silent devoutness, and what we feel respecting them expressed only in sighs and tears,not blazoned forth in the unreverent strains of human eloquence. This is one part of that behaving ourselves as we ought in the house of God, upon which the Apostle insists in the text.

"There is one point more on which it is my duty to instruct you as members of Christ's holy Catholic Church. Avoid controversy. Religion is too sacred a thing for controversy. Its essential doctrines are made so certain by the Church that, as the holy Apostle states in the verse following the text, It is without' that is, it ought to be without controversy.' "Great is the mystery of godliness.' It is a mystery, and, as such, is to be viewed with awful reverence, and silent adoring wonder-not curiously inquired into and discussed. We hear sometimes of religious controversy; but it might more properly be termed irreligious, for it arises entirely from irreverence of the mind.

"But besides being an indication of a want of piety and of true humility, and, therefore, wrong in spirit, controversy never tends to any good result. As respects the Church, it destroys unity that most essential bond of Christians. As respects yourselves, it only unsettles the mind, and involves it in doubt and uncertainty; as we see in the case of those who disputed about Christ's claims, as related in the 7th chapter of St. John, where it is most significantly

recorded at the end-"And every man went to his own home." They came to no common agreement, because they made Christ's doctrine a matter of dispute, and not a matter of obedience. It is not the appointment of our Lord and Master that the people should ever listen to the voice of controversy, or set up themselves as judges of what is truth. If doubts arise in their own minds, they should bring them unto the Priest, that he may resolve them, and they should receive the law at his mouth in unquestioning submission. It is only by so acting that the unity of the Church, which is as essential as its verity, can be preserved.

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'Finally, then, I exhort and command you to keep close to your holy, faithful, tender-hearted mother,the Church. What child, indeed, would not put implicit faith in its own mother? She teaches you how, in all respects, to behave yourselves as members of Christ's body. Be content to tread the holy round of fast and festival, of duty and service, which she prescribes for you, and you shall know peace. All without her holy circle is dissension and distraction, doubt and perplexity; all within is certainty and order, harmony, and love. Her bosom is the abode of all kind affections-the soft resting-place for all the weary and heavy-laden the source of all spiritual composure and satisfaction. Say, then, with the holy Psalmist This shall be my rest for ever; here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein."

The preacher ended, but not our dreamer's dream.

There was such calm confidence in his statements, and his last words fell so soothingly upon the ear of the hearer, that he sunk into a still deeper slumber than before, and the whole remainder of the night was passed in a state of unconscious forgetfulness, except that a strange sense of oppression came over him, and he every now and then started, and struggled, like a person labouring under the nightmare, as if he felt held down by some invisible power, from which he in vain endeavoured to get free. When the imaginary effort was over, he would again fall into a deep, undisturbed repose for a while. Next, an airy ghost-like shape would haunt him, and seem to tread close upon his heels; but when he turned (as in fancy he often turned) to strike it, it yielded impassive to his blows, and was still there. Anon, he would make a grasp at a large bright sword which lay before him, but of which he could get no hold. Thus troubled, though deep, were his slumbers, while the long, long night went on.

In the meantime, dark clouds had gathered round the distant horizon, and hung louring over the heretofore bright sunshiny valley. The lurid lightnings flared the sky opening and shutting rapidly in rifted ghastliness, revealing denser and denser clouds of angry hue behind, as if the wrath of Heaven were indeed shrouded under their wings. By some unseen influence the country, which, before he had entered the mystic temple looked so rich and beautiful, changed into blackness and barrenness. A withering

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blight has suddenly passed over every object. The trees have dropped their yet unripe fruit; the herbs and the grass droop in visible faintness; the rivers and streams, so lately of silvery brightness, look like so much liquid pitch; the animals moan and cast their eyes upwards as if labouring under some sensible distress; the birds cease their song; the inhabitants, who but yesterday looked the very pictures of cheerful contentment and of hope erect, have assumed a haggard, sad, downcast aspect-their dwellings even, squalid and neglected now, seem to partake by sympathy in their own moral wretchedness, -poverty, in fact, has here succeeded to plenty, mistrust to confidence, treachery and violence to truthfulness and love. Never had so great a change, in so short a time, and by such unaccountable means, been effected.

But all unconscious was our dreamer of the withering process that was passing over the scene of loveliness, of plenty, and of peace, upon which his eyes had just before rested. He is held in the chains of insensibility by the power of the serpent, which lies coiled up under his pillow. The soporific influence of this creature was so potent upon the organs of sense (though nature struggled from time to time to recover herself to waking consciousness), that no human energy could break its force, arouse the sleeper to active intelligence, or make him sensible of the presence of the fatal enemy with which, when he awakes, he will have to contend.

The serpent which produced these stupefying effects was of no ordinary kind. Besides the peculiar narcotic power which it possessed, and through which it caused all who came within its influence to fall into deep sleep, it had also fearful organs of destructiveness when once provoked; for, strange to tell, this wonderful creature had seven heads, each grooved into a grisly jointed neck of several inches in length, and each head contained a sting of fatal virulence. Its stings were not so many fangs lying, lancet-like (as the ordinary adder's sting), in the side of the mouth, but the point of each tongue sent out a sting of an arrow-headed shape, full of deadly poison.

Another peculiarity of this monster was, that its seven heads were made capable of closing down into one, and, when closed down into one, the whole virus of its seven forked tongues was transferred, and became concentrated in one single sting in the tail, of tremendous while its face assumed the appearpower; ance of a female's of the most fascinating beauty. Its eyes, which were before of a dull dusky green, turned to the brightest sky-blue, and beamed with a mild intelligence and a witching softness which it was next to impossible to withstand. So much, indeed, in this new shape, did this dreadful serpent look like a lovely woman, that all power of resistance to it (unless, perchance, you carried about you a certain antidote against such charms) became for the time suspended, as if the beholder was under the spell of some mighty enchantress.