My Prayer Book_LASANCE - the Catholic Kingdom!

we would be true disaples. It is the spirit of Christ,
in a word, which must ;be in us; which must guide us
and fashion us, and whiab must find in us - in each
one of us - a vehicle to express itself, a jewel through
which to convey its sunshine.
"For this reason it is that you might set yourself to
imitate the external life of the Gospel to the very letter
-dwell in poverty at Nazareth, go about through
Galilee practising the Gospel, wen raise up the sick,
and yet not be a true disciple; yet be nothing more than
a window coated with a film to look like stained glass.
Such merely external imitation of Christ is nothing;
it is but a parody of the Christian life. But our religion
consists not in imitating the external acts of Christ, but
in letting the spirit of Christ animate us and produce
in us what acts He wills.
"Doubtless in every Christian life there is a certain
external conformity to the earthly life of Our Lord,
since the same spirit will ever tend to manifest itself
under similar forms in the same circumstances. Hence
we shall ever find some Christian people renouncing
home and wealth as Christ did when He set forth upon
His public life; so too, whilst there are sick in the world
we shall find the spirit of Christ moving people to have
compassion on the sick. But in all these cases the external
conformity proceeds from the direct guidance
of Christ in our souls. We &a not so much because
He Himself acted in this way when on earth, but because
more or less His spirit is Jading us to act. He might
lead us to a lifeapparently quite different from the type
of His own earthly life, as in the case of those who
co~lscientiously keep pomion of much wealth, knowing
that such is the will of Christ in their regard; and
they are as truly Christ-like in their lives as those who
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