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 in man it tends to a state of permanence by identifying itself more and more with truth, goodness and beauty, which are forever the same. To live in the highest sense is to find and recognize one's self in all things, remaining constant in the midst of a transitory and evanescent world. The realm of consciousness for these consecrated virgins is not narrow: their love and sympathy are wide as the heart of Christ.

As we find ourselves in giving ourselves to wife and children, to God and country, to truth and honor, so they in abandoning all find a nobler and a sweeter life. They are the representatives of the highest devotion, the purest love and the most beneficent sympathies of the human heart. They are the heroines of the service of humanity, the priestesses who keep aglow the fire of the divine charity which Christ came to kindle in the world. In their youth they drank at the fountain which quenches thirst forever; in their springtime bloom they saw through the veil that hides or blurs the image of the Eternal, and ever after they walk waiting for God. Since religion in its deepest sense is a life more than a doctrine, our sisterhoods are an argument for the truth of the Catholic faith, whose force seems to render all our controversies, apologies and schemes of edification more or less idle. These silent armies, moving in obedience to the whisperings of the unseen Master, make us invincible. So long as, generation after generation, tens of thousands of the purest, gentlest souls find that the love of Christ constrains them, Christ lives and rules. This is the marvelous thing that has impressed some of the greatest minds. Heroes and orators grow to be themes for declamation, but the purest and the best follow close to Christ and devote themselves to Him with a personal sense of love as strong as that of a mother for her child.

They who know our sisterhoods most thoroughly, best know that this is simple truth. Their lives bear witness to the divinity and power of the Saviour with a force and eloquence to which mere words cannot attain. In the midst of weakness they are strong; in the midst of trouble they are calm; in the presence of death they are joyful. They are rich enough though poor, happy enough though beset by trials. In solitude, they are full of peace; far from the 34