With the theological virtues, we move away from ourselves to attain the highest obj ect set before human action. Wonderful as it seems, God becomes our object. No one calls in question the fact that the theological virtues are preeminent and people certainly do not dream of denying that they have a part to play in the spiritual life. It is doubtful, however, whether they are cultivated with the care they deserve and whether they are actually directed towards their object. Let us consider this direction which it is important they should take in practice.

Among the different virtues, faith bears a strongly marked objective character. Its purpose is to attach the mind to the truths God has revealed. These truths in no sense derive from us and are certainly not the fruit of our meditations. God has revealed them and they have entered into us through the medium of hearing.

It is sometimes felt that the inward tendency and logic of liturgical prayer, and those of contemplative prayer, are conflicting, so that these two types of prayer will always attract different temperaments and define different vocations. And indeed, there is an evident divergence between the tendency of contemplative prayer towards simplicity, as the soul is drawn away from multiplicity of concepts and images towards a dry and wordless absorption in God, and the surface multiplicity of the liturgy with its complexities of ceremonial and chant, its elabore ate and absorbing symbolism, its richness of doctrinal content and conceptual teaching. Yet in such a field, personal attraction cannot be the deciding element; it is primarily from the life and living voice of the Church, and only secondarily from the writings of the saints and the masters of the spiritual life, that we must learn the laws of the interior life.

How often people put, rather anxiously, the question: How do I know if I have a vocation? It is not easy to answer, and part of their anxiety comes from the fact that, as likely as not, they are looking for a cut-and-dried answer that can seldom, in the nature of the case, be given. The following of a vocation is a venture of faith. But it still remains true that the venture ought to be made with prudence. My aim in these articles is to examine first what a vocation is, and secondly what kind of answer can be given to the question just put. It is, after all, a question that many, besides those who feel themselves drawn to consecrate their lives to the service of God, may be called upon to face. Parents and priests and teachers may have to help solve it. And experience shows that all too often they have but the vaguest idea how to set about it.

Robert Grosseteste, one of the greatest men of the thirteenth centurf England and bishop of Lincoln from 1235-1253, was in frequent contact with the numerous religious houses in his diocese. Often his high-handed but probably necessary actions as Visitor were not appreciated by the communities which experienced them. His correspondence moreover shows him complaining to the abbot of Fleury about the irregular lives of some of his monks belonging to cells in his diocese, and giving sarcastic advice to the canons of Missenden on the choice of their future superior. But the present letter to the monks of Bury St Edmunds is witness to do much more cordial feeling, and shows the bishop's deep esteem for the life led by these monks in accordance with ideals which he shared.