THROUGH 'il GLASS, DARKLY

OEUR Marie Bernard est morte : quelles souf- ' s frances depuis vingt ans! ' ' Sister Mary Bernard is dead : how she must have suffered all these twenty years.' Nearly fifty years have come and gone since the day in Easter week when these words fell on my ears from the holy and revered priest, the friend and guardian of my childhood. H e had known and loved the little peasant-girl of the Pyrenees and had often spoken about her to the child, still unfami- liar with death, who listened to his words. To the latter the name of Sr. Marie Bernard had hitherto called up only wonder and admiration. She had seen more than once the Mother of fair Love, the Cause of our Joy! Had not the Beloved Mother promised, too, to make her happy in the kingdom of her Son ?

But there was no mistaking the accents of compas- sion in the mouth of the good priest. H e knew so well what poor Bernadette had had to endure for those twenty-one years she still dwelt in this vale of tears, aiter having beheld, fleetingly no doubt, perhaps ' through a glass, darkly,' the Vision of incomparable Loveliness.

The shy, retiring child had had to submit to the harsh interrogatories of officialdom, to be followed by the scarcely less intolerable and more persistent, cross- questionings of numberless enquirers, doubtless well- meaning, of ten tactless, sometimes even baldly curious. In a later period her Superiors sought to shield her as much as might be from the inquisitive, but their efforts seemed fruitless in face of the ever- rising tide of travellers who, actuated no doubt by piety and devotion, endeavoured to hear from Blessed Bernadette's own lips some description of her

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Heavenly Visitant. Little wonder that Bernadette shrank from the foolish, vapid questions with which she was often assailed. How could she, a poor peasant girl, expound to the self -satisfied intellectual or the denizen from high places, the Yision of perfect human loveliness? I t were easier to portray to the untravelled Laplander, incapable of visualising aught but his native snows, the sunny osange groves of Seville, or the stately gardens of the Alhambra.

Endowed with a more than ordinary share of the common sense so conspicuous in the French peasant, Bernadette had often the greatest difficulty in restrain- ing her indignation at the futile, often senseless re- marks addressed to her. Little wonder that when at af ter-dinner recreation there came the almost invari- able call ‘ Soeur Marie Bernard au parloir ’ ; ‘ Sister Mary Bernard is wanted in the parlour,’ poor Berna- dette would exclaim, ‘ T h e Ass is sent for to go through her paces’; and sadly enough, if quite re- signedly, she would face the ordeal which she knew was before her.

Declared Blessed by Holy Church, and soon, we hope, to be raised to her altars, Bernadette Soubirous, in religion Sister Mary Bernard, passed indeed through much tribulation ere she was again admitted, but on this occasion, it is permitted to think, for all time, to the benignant aze of her Heavenly Mother,

ten years have gone by since the year of the appari- tions, and next year will complete the half-century since Blessed Bernadette was called to her rewlard on the Wednesday in Easter week. The recollection of the awakening to her life of sorrow lingers on as fresh now as if it were only yesterday. What we see, indeed, of the life of God’s chosen ones, is often ‘ through a glass, darkly. ’

the Virgin surpassing B y Sweet. Three score and

FRANCIS MONTGOMERY. 178