Come, Lord Jesus!’ is the earnest prayer in the closing words of the last book of our Holy Scriptures. This, the only prophetic book of the New Testament, tells of a Kingdom founded by the Lamb that was slain, withal a Kingdom still looking to and yearning for a greater perfectioning. We are the fortunate children of that Kingdom, privileged with the blessing of seeing the things that we see, and able in faith to cast our minds over the unfolding of God's plan through the ages, and so enabled to grasp something of the wonder of the Word-made-flesh and his dwelling amongst us. The Incarnation is the first and necessary step in God's redemptive plan. It Prepared for and is a presage of a Second Coming which will mean a completion of God's plans and which will bring the world of men as well as the universality of creatures to the term which God has prepared for them.

In an age of technical achievements and the mechanical repetition of words the unique Redemptive action of Christ The Word is particularly significant. Men are obliged in the exercise of free-will to choose Christ, who is the Word and brings the words of life, or Satan whose words are lies leading to death. Life eternal is the proper end of the whole man, but since the Fall he is open to temptation, and most of all to temptation through natural pride. Thus his especial tendency to pride is found in those activities which distinguish him from the other living creatures. His reason, a common object of idolatry, his humour—did not Bernard Shaw among other satirists take refuge from faith in a kind of pseudo-Godlike mockery? — his ability to use tools, whether useful or artistic or for pleasure, and above all his power to communicate the life of his soul through language, to other souls.

Pondering the mystery of God taking flesh, we ought to notice that everything which acts intelligently acts through an idea, a verbum, formed in its intellect. This we see in a builder or any craftsman producing an article according to the plan which his mind has conceived. Now because the Son of God is the divine Verbum, it follows that God has made everything through the Son. further, the maker of anything is the one to repair it; if a house falls down the architect who built it should be consulted.

Amongst the creatures created by God through his Word, rational beings hold pride of place since all else seem to be arranged for their service. This is understandable because rational beings have control of their actions through their freedom of choice, whereas the others are motivated by the force of nature and not by deliberate judgment.

We know exactly as much as we have suffered; neither more, nor less. If it were not possible to suffer with, and even for other people, what follows would not follow, since it is these to whom it is addressed who are suffering directly. But !if these lines contain any value it is only in so far as the writer has been able to suffer with, and for, those suffering directly, who are in need of sympathy and comfort. Should they, in fact, be born of illusion and shallow sentiment they are worthless and will fail to stir any deep longings, in which case may they at least do no harm.

A certain obscurity seems to surround the idea of religious chastity (manifest even in the various names given to it, chastity, perfect continence, purity, virginity), and there is a tendency to envisage it in a negative manner, as chiefly the exclusion of sex and marriage. On the other hand, many recent studies have emphasised the positive richness of the idea and the many elements involved in it. It may therefore not be out of place to try to give a synthetic view of the whole. Basically it is a special kind of temperance called chastity, balanced between lust and insensibility, and supported by the sense of sharne and modesty, and by the attraction of a spiritual beauty. Its specific difference as religious chastity comes from a vow, which belongs to the virtue of religion; while charity, both towards God and the neighbour, is its end.