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with Thy servant David I may be able to say joyfully at the end of my life: “I have run the way of Thy commandments, when Thou didst enlarge my heart.”^[1] I have kept all Thou hast told me to keep; now I expect the reward Thou hast promised, that is, none other but Thyself in Thy kingdom of heaven which Thou hast prepared for me. Amen.

1. Some have a false and presumptuous love and devotion to the Mother of God, and build their hope of heaven thereon; a false and deceitful hope. 2. Others have a tepid, imperfect love for the Mother of God, and build their hope of heaven thereon; a good hope indeed, but not a very firm one.—Preached on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.

Qui me invenerit, inveniet vitam, et hauriet salutem a Domino.—Prov. viii. 35. From to-day’s Epistle.

“He that shall find me shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord.”

This is the joyful day on which the world first beheld that most blessed Virgin, of whom was born Jesus the Saviour of the world. Rejoice, ye just! your advocate, by whom God wishes to secure your salvation, is born. Rejoice, O sinners! for the refuge of sinners is born, by whose hands God will give you the grace of repentance and true conversion. Rejoice, especially you who love Mary! Hear what she says to you: “He that shall find me shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord.” No one who loves Mary shall be lost forever. So it is; to love and honor Mary is one of the surest signs of predestination to heaven, as I have often told you in my sermons. But yet there are many who do not understand this in the proper sense, and