another messenger from heaven, to "take the child and his mother" "into the land of Israel ?" To St. Joseph. Who "every year went to Jerusalem at the solemn day of the Pasch" with Jesus and Mary? St. Joseph. Who was privileged to earn by the labour of his hands daily bread for Jesus and Mary? St. Joseph. Who constantly walked and talked with Jesus, and lived in the most familiar intimacy and presence of Jesus? who, hour by hour, looked into his heavenly countenance, and saw infinite intelligence and wisdom beaming in his divine eye? St. Joseph. Who died in the arms of Jesus and Mary? St. Joseph. Who, in a word, was chosen by God to be called the Father of Jesus, and to be reputed among men as the father of Jesus? St. Joseph.

Here, as we before remarked, is the keynote, the source and reason of the dignity, sanctity, and special privileges and virtues of St. Joseph.

Jesus, infinite sanctity, would never allow any man to be the spouse of his Immaculate Mother, to be his own guardian and protector, to be a member, nay, head, of the Holy Family, to be even called and deemed his father, but the purest, the most holy, the most perfect that God ever created or ever

will create. Such is the sanctity of our great Patriarch St. Joseph.*

We may conclude this section with the words of St. Alphonsus Liguori and of Father Segneri. "We cannot doubt," says the saint, "that whilst St. Joseph lived with Jesus, he received such superabundance of grace, that he surpasses in sanctity and merit all other saints." The holy and eloquent Father Segneri writes: "St. Joseph was ennobled and singularly privileged with the honour of spouse of the Mother of God, a dignity which is a solid principle; from which it follows, with every mark of probability, that St. Joseph was not only sanctified, as we maintain, in his Mother's womb, but that he was afterwards confirmed in grace, and exempt from evil; so that no man-we boldly affirm, no man— on this earth was ever holier than Joseph."

Glorious Patriarch, greatest of Saints, St. Joseph, pray for us, and obtain for us the grace of a holy life and happy death.

SECTION III.

St. Joseph was Sanctified in his Mother's Womb.

Upon the truth of the above proposition or

Suarez, Tom. ii., Disp. viii., Sect. 2.

opinion, we say, at the start, the Gospels and early Fathers are silent. In the early ages the Sacred Humanity was so vividly before the minds of the people, that the great duty of the Christian Apologists in those times was to prove to an unbelieving race the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hence we find in their writings not much on the Sacred Humanity of our Saviour, little upon the Blessed Virgin, and still less upon St. Joseph. We may also remark that God, who knows" the times and the seasons,' reserved Devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and to St. Joseph in a special manner, for this nineteenth century. Let us here state that everyone is at perfect liberty to hold and believe the opposite opinion, vis,, that sanctification before birth, after the Blessed Virgin, was the special grace of St. John the Baptist and the Prophet Jeremias alone, and not the privilege of our great Patriarch St. Joseph. We only wish to show that the opinion at the head of this section is tenable, and that everyone can safely hold and believe it, as we ourselves do, on sound theological principles.

The Prophet Jeremias was sanctified in his mother's womb. "And the word of the Lord," writes the Prophet, "came to me

saying: Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and made thee a prophet unto the nations." (Jer. i. 4, 5.) St. John the Baptist was sanctified before his birth. The Gospel says: "And Mary rising up in those days, went into the hill country with haste into a city of Juda. And she entered into the house of Zachary, and saluted Elizabeth. And it came to pass: that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost. And she cried out with a loud voice and said: Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me. For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears the infant in my womb leaped for joy" (Luke, i. 3944).

The Blessed Virgin was sanctified in her conception. Sin, whether original or actual, never sullied her immaculate soul.

Now, we have seen elsewhere that God gives graces and special privileges suited and in proportion to the dignity and mission of

His Saints. We have also seen that our great Patriarch, St. Joseph, was elevated by God in dignity beyond any Saint of the Old or New Testament; and that he ranks next to the Blessed Virgin Mary herself. If, therefore, the Almighty sanctified, as He did, the Prophet Jeremias, before he was born, because his mission was to proclaim His eternal truths; if God sanctified, as He did, the Baptist in his mother's womb, because he was to baptise and to point out the Lamb of God; is it not just and reasonable to believe that the same special privilege of sanctification before birth was bestowed by God upon St. Joseph, whose dignity was greater, whose mission was of a higher order, and whose relations with the Saviour of the world were more intimate than those of the Prophet Jeremias, of the great Baptist, or of any other saint?

We shall not dwell longer on the intrinsic arguments in favour of the above privilege, but shall content ourselves to cite a few of the many authorities before us, holding the opinion we have adopted.

The learned Cornelius à Lapide writes: "Truly, if God gives this privilege of sanctification before birth to any other saint