In Advent we go back to the very beginning of the Gospel to St John the Baptist and his message. He has been called the school-master of the Apostles, and later apostles and preachers ought to study no less intently in his school. First, because he was the fore-runner of our blessed Lord, come to make his path straight and smooth before him. He was the remover of obstacles in that path, that would be in the way when the Lord came. This is not the highest power, but a very necessary one. His work was not so much that of a sacrament, which confers grace, as of a sacramental. The preaching an teaching, the rites and ceremonies of religious life with its specia clothes and organization, is of the same kind. All that has tne power of disposing men to come to our Lord; it stands as a witness to his truth and goodness.

Nowhere are we told more clearly and briefly of the manner of Christ's presence amongst us than in the introduction to St John's gospel. He is made Flesh; that is to say he is one who comes. In the first instance it is he who comes to us. Secondly he is the light that is the life of men, but a light that shines in darkness. Thirdly he must be awaited and received by us. And fourthly those who receive him fmd that they have the power to see the light shining in the darkness. ‘And we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.’ (John I. 14).

The Jews were remarkable in that they were looking to the future. Not for them only to rest content with the great favours that God had shown them in the past; the greatest favour was to come, in the person of the Prophet, the Messias, the holy one of God.

It has been seen in the previous article that there are three aspects under which we may approach the analysis of a vocation. Within the vocation itself there is the divine call and the ecclesiastical call. External to it, but as its necessary condition, there are the appropriate gifts and qualities in the recipient. We have seen that the divine call is a grace communicated to the soul. From the side of God we have seen that this grace is offered not as a matter of precept, but of counsel, to resist it, or rather to fail to receive it, is not necessarily sinful since its acceptance is left to our free, prudential choice; but this is not to say that it may not be sinful. For there are other sins than those of formal disobedience to a precept; there is the sin of rashness, against prudence. And failure to accept the grace offerered may be just such a sin.

Noise and haste brand our times….’ No novel statement, this: we have all heard it in some form or other, and most people, at least in the Western world, surely agree. We are slaves—the very watch on our wrist a sign of servitude—we have ‘no time', ‘no rest'; ‘Angina Temporis’ (as Dr Bramesfeld terms it) is a common disease. It is a fact that, even if a few free days do come our way, we are no longer caplable of relaxing; restless activity holds us entirely in its power. Man, his nerves tense and his mind fuddled, finds no shelter of peace awaiting him when he is ejected nightly from office or factory; wearily he reaches home, only to plunge himself into so-called amusements. His money is taken from him and in return he becomes momentarily intoxicated with unhealthy, forced excitment, but there is neither peace nor lasting satisfaction in it.

We have a first-hand account of the sufferings oj these martyrs in a letter which the Christians of Lyons, in the south of France, wrote to the churches of Asia Minor, with whom they had historical connections. The letter was quoted at length by the Church historian Eusebius in the fourth century, and a translation of it as he gives it is here presented. The reader will notice that the word ‘confession occurs very often. It is always used in the sense of a confession of faith, and never in the sense of a confession of sins. Besides describing the gruesome torments which the martyrs endured, the writer constantly refers to them in terms from the athletic world. One such phrase which he uses has become a commonplace of Christian language, the phrase ‘a martyr's crown. Nowadays we think of a crown as a king's head’ dress, made of gold and precious stones.