crashing over the city and citadel the Algerines cried for quarter, but no terms except absolute surrender of all power as a State were made. They had to submit. The flag of Algiers was hauled down. from the Kasbah, the place where for centuries it had waved defiance to all the world, and it has never since been replaced, saved by the ensign of France. The power of the Moors was forever shattered in that part of Morocco-and all the world breathed a sigh of blessed relief.

But to secure their conquest proved no light task for the newcomers. More than one campaign was necessary to compel the submission of the tribes. Of these the most formidable were the Kabyles. They were led by a splendid fighter. a chief named Abd-el-Kader, who was both strategist and cavalry leader. He was conquered at length, but only by kindness. The French induced him to visit Paris, and he was so

impressed with the greatness of the place and the generous reception he met -for the French love a gallant foe-that he laid down his arms and persuaded his tribesmen to follow suit.

Other tribes were won over by a very ingenious device of the French Government. The Arabs are very superstitious and their belief in magic is unbounded. Their Marabouts, or magic doctors, encourage this belief for obvious reasons. To counteract their influence, which was exercised against French rule, the Government in Paris sent over a very adroit conjurer named Robert Houdin to challenge the Marabouts to feats of magic. They accepted the test. He did every trick they did, in the presence of thousands; it was all in the open air. They were furious with rage and jealousy. Seeing their state of mind, and fearing they might take his life if an opportunity offered. Houdin tried his great trick. He asked for the rifles of half a dozen of

the best marksmen among them, loaded them with ball in their presence, and gave them the weapons that they might ram home the bullets. Then he invited them one after the other to fire at

him at close range. Every ball he showed caught between his teeth as each shot was fired each ball being marked. How he did this trick is not known; but he did it, and it cowed the Marabouts. They believed it was useless to attempt anything against one who bore a charmed life, like Houdin.

The French were as astute in other ways in dealing with the Arabs and Moors. They gave them as much latitude as to their religion and personal liberty as they found compatible with orderly government. The Moselms' sore point is his religion. On this he is fanatical to the death. But his religion allows slave-dealing; and the Catholic Church forbids such accursed traffic. Hence when Cardinal Lavigerie essayed to mitigate the horrors of the slave trade as carried on by the Arabs from Egypt across to Morocco, he encountered the stern opposition of the Government, as represented by Marshal MacMahon, then the ruler of Algeria.

The great-hearted Cardinal, however, was not the sort of man to shrink before any human power in the performance of what he believed to be a divine commission. He persevered, and the whole. world knows the result. He established the Order of the White Fathers-sol

dier-monks, like those of St. John of old-whose mission it is to bring Christianity into North Africa and free the slaves. These devoted men are preparing the ground for a future forward movement in Africa. Their labors have already borne splendid fruit in the mitigation of the horrors of the slave trade and the practical examples of the tenderness of the Catholic Church for the

most miserable of God's children which they are constantly affording.

There are many well-meaning writers and missionaries who take the view that Mohammedanism is doing a good work in the world because its professors are temperate in food and drink and faithful in their religious belief and practice, honest in commercial dealings and brave in war. These apologists rarely present the other side of the picture. In the narrative of the captivity of Father Ohrwalder and his nun companions in Omdurman we get some idea of the hideous reality of life (and death) in Moslem Africa. The Mahdi was then in power. He announced his mission to be the regeneration and purification of Mohammedanism. These are some of the conditions which existed under his rule, as observed by Father Orhwalder:

"Smallpox was then very prevalent and horrible sights continually met our eyes. The unfortunate sufferers had no one to help them, and they were left to die either of the disease or of hunger; they lay about under the trees in the market-place, shunned by every one: often, when still living, they were dragged off by men who tied ropes round their bodies and pulled them along the ground till they were beyond the outskirts of the town, and there they were left to be devoured by the hyenas. These were the tyrant's own people, yet we see from this horrible treatment how the hearts of those in authority were steeled by selfish panic or superstition against the last rudimentary instincts of human feeling. What need to give details of captives dying under the lash; of wretches, famine-stricken and plundered to the last shred, scratching in the floors of the ruined huts in the hope of scraping up a handful of gum with which, unwholesome as such food was, to sustain a miserable existence; of the cold-blooded massacre of brave garri

sons; of the survivors of a defeated tribe hanged by the hundred together and the corpses flung into a well; of cruel mutilations inflicted as an ordinary punishment on the remnants of another tribe hunted down and destroyed?

"The slave trade was the Mahdi's mainstay. As a consequence of that traffic and the enormous waste of male life, through the havoc of ceaseless warfare and the consequent disproportion of the sexes, the elementary basis of all morality was rendered insecure. Sternly repressive edicts were issued in vain. The women were denounced as the source of this ever-spreading taint. A council was held with the result that it was decided to make an example of one, and the victim selected was an unfortunate who had borne two illegitimate children. The poor creature was led into the woman's quarter of the market, and there she was lowered into a grave with her last child tied to her bosom, and both stoned to death by a cruel and hard-hearted crowd, who seemed to take a fiendish delight in this inhuman piece of work."

Besides this awful social chaos, in civil and commercial matters the position, as seen by Father Ohrwalder, was equally rotten. Bribery and corruption, the usurers' baneful trade, brigandage and thievery of all grades down to pocket-picking, with slaves trained to be ex

pert practitioners in all, formed the incidents of every-day life in Omdurman.

The picture drawn by Father Ohrwalder is the faithful reflex of what goes on wherever Mohammedanism has allied itself with the slave dealers of Central Africa. Hence the first essential in the reclamation of Mohammedanism is the eradication of that frightful traffic. Cardinal Lavigerie's idea has to be developed and extended. It has a right to get help from every Christian power, for the evil it seeks to destroy is one that affects all civilization.

Of the interior of Morocco comparatively little is known to Europeans. The chief cities of that vast region are Fez and Timbuctoo. Travellers have declared that in these cities there are libraries containing many valuable manuscripts in the Greek, Arabic, Chaldean, and Latin languages. The country is said to be rich in physical treasures also gold in great quantities, ivory, and gums and spices of rare quality, ostrich feathers, ambergris, and many other articles of commerce. When the country is opened up for trade, as it soon must be, by modern methods of travel, a vast change must come over its moral and commercial status. The Cross may yet in time recover its place, and the Crescent retire to the quarter whence it came, or mayhap disappear forever.

"In My Father's house there are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." -John, xiv, 2.

N order to help and encourage

all souls to turn from the love of the world to the love of God, to cause them to repent of sin and practice virtue, Blessed Henry Suso, the Servant of Eternal Wisdom, pictures for them, with the love and light of a saint and scholar, the boundless joys of heaven.

"Lift up thine eyes," he exclaims, "and behold thy true home. Thou dost belong to the fatherland of the celestial paradise. Thou art as yet a stranger, a guest, a weary pilgrim; and as a pilgrim hastens to return to his home, where his dear friends expect him and await him with great longing, so shouldst thou desire to hasten back to thy fatherland, where all will rejoice to see thee, where all are longing for thy joyous presence, where all are desiring to greet thee and unite thee to their blessed company forever."

The thought of heaven, the fatherland of the soul, the home of the blessed, fills the human heart with that great theological virtue, hope, of which St. John of the Cross says: "O, blessed hope, thou dost obtain the measure of thy confidence. Without this heavenly inspired hope man cannot live and fight for justice. Jesus, the good Master, understood perfectly the human heart and provided abundantly for all its wants. Before taking His disciples into the Garden of Olives that they might witness His bitter agony, He brought them with Him to the heights of Mount Tabor, there to witness a glimpse of eternal light and glory. "He was transfigured before them, and His face did shine as

the sun and His garments became as white as snow." The vision brought Peter to the realization of his future reward and strengthened him to prepare. for his many painful struggles. How often may he not in the days of persecution and imprisonment have recalled this. scene, and cried out: "Lord, it is good for us to be here!"

Heaven beggars description. It is too far exalted above our limited and material conceptions of beauty and blessedness. The rays of the "true light falling upon the disciples on Mount Tabor dazzled their eyes." They defy all description. St. Paul, rapt even to the third heaven, and hearing the secret words, tells us that "It is not given to man to utter them." Desiring, however, to tell us what he had seen and heard in his ecstasy, he gives us a negative description. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what things God hath prepared for those that love Him."

In speaking of heaven, Blessed Henry Suso takes for his guide the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor and saint-Thomas of Aquin-and seeks additional light from meditations on the Sacred Scriptures, the sermons of the Fathers and the hymns of the Church. We shall try to analyze and elucidate the principal points. Even an obscure and imperiect knowledge of heaven interests the soul which was made for it, and longs constantly with an almost infinite desire to possess it. "Lord, Thou hast made me for Thyself, and my heart is restless until it rests in Thee," exclaims St. Augustine.

Our Servant of Eternal Wisdom first calls our attention to the question, "Where is heaven?" Tradition places

it above and far beyond us. Christ ascended into heaven. The Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed into heaven. Eternal Wisdom says to the Servant, "Ascend thou on high with Me, I will carry thee thither in spirit, and will give thee a glimpse into the future. Behold the ninth heaven, which is incalculably greater than the earth. Behold another heaven, the 'coelum empyreum,' the fiery heaven, so called, not from the fire, but from the transparent, immovable, unchangeable brightness which dwells therein. This is the glorious court in which the heavenly hosts dwell, and where all the children of God rejoice. There stand the everlasting thrones from which the evil spirits were hurled and on which the elect are seated."

Of this place, so bright, immovable and unchangeable, the saint tries to give us a more perfect idea by using the comparison of St. John: "And He took me up in spirit to a great high mountain, and He showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, having the glory of God. And the Light thereof was like a precious stone, and it had a wall, great and high, adorned with all manner of precious stones and the twelve Apostles are twelve pearls. And the street of the City was pure gold. And the City hath no need of the sun nor of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the Lamp thereof." And this Holy City, this New Jerusalem, Henry Suso fills with all that is beautiful in nature. "Behold," he writes, "how this beautiful City glistens with beaten gold, how it glitters with costly jewels, how it beams with precious stones, transparent as crystal, reflecting red roses and white lilies. hold the heavenly fields. Lo! here are all delights of summer, here are the sunny meads of May, here is the valley of bliss, here harps and viols sing their sweet melodies."

Be

To picture still more graphically this place of joy, he fills it not only with all that is beautiful and enjoyable, but banishes from it all that is disagreeable and painful. How full of meaning are his words: "Here is pleasure without pain in everlasting security." Here we are again reminded of St. John, when he says: "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away,-He that sat on the throne said: 'Behold, I make all things new.'"

Having this picture of the place "where all things are made new" clearly and distinctly defined in our minds, the saint asks us to advance a step and study the glorious citizens of this New Jerusalem, the angels and saints. He first shows us Mary, the Queen, who soars aloft in dignity and joy above the whole celestial host. "Steal nearer," he

whispers, "and behold the sweet Queen of the celestial kingdom, whom thou lovest with such ardor, soaring aloft im dignity and joy above the whole celestial host, inclining tenderly towards her Beloved. See how her ravishing beauty. fills the heavenly choirs with wonder and delight. And, greatest joy of all, thy tender Mother has turned her compassionate eyes towards thee and all sinners and powerfully appeals to her Beloved Son and intercedes with Him.”

This is one of the masterly word-pictures of our saint. It is worthy of note that Mary is not only "the great sign appearing in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, on her head a crown of twelve stars, the glory of Jerusalem," but that in her glory in the glorious Jerusalem she remains the "Compassionate Mother," the "Refuge of Sinners," the "Help of Christians." From Mary we turn with the eyes of pure understanding to view the angels. The nine choirs are divided into three hierarchies.