superficial grasp upon what is involved in the Incarnation. The impression we get of S. Joseph is that of a man of great simplicity and gentleness of character--that childlikeness which was later praised by his foster Son. Such qualities do not produce much impression on the superficial observer, but they are of great spiritual value. They are the concomitants of a special type of open-mindedness. Open-mindedness is a quality much praised and little practiced. But the open-mindedness which is commonly praised is not the open-mindedness which is praiseworthy. What is at present meant by open-mindedness is in reality failure to have any mind at all upon a given subject. It is the attitude of doubt which never proceeds so far as to arrive at a solution. To have an open mind means to the contemporary man to hold all conclusions loosely, to consider all things open to question, to be ready to abandon what now appears to be true in favour of something which to-morrow may appear to be more true. In other words, we are invited to base life on pure scepticism. Now no life can be so conducted. We live by a faith of some sort, whether it be a faith in God or no. The most sceptical mind has to believe something to act at all. It cannot even doubt without affirming a belief in its own intellectual processes. The open mind that never reaches any certainty to fill it is a very poor possession indeed. And it is not at all what we mean when we say of S. Joseph that he was open-minded. We mean that he was receptive of new spiritual impressions and capable of further spiritual development. There are minds, and they are not unusual among people of a certain degree of spiritual development, which we can best describe as having reached a given stage of growth and then shut up. Or, to vary the figure, they impress one as having a certain capacity, and when that has been reached, being able to contain nothing further. They come to a stop. From that point they try to maintain the position they have acquired. But that is impossible: they inevitably fall away unless they are going forward. When the power of spiritual assimilation is dead, we are spiritually in a dying condition. What we mean by having an open and childlike mind, then, is that one has this power of spiritual assimilation and, consequently, a power of growth. The sceptic is afflicted with spiritual indigestion; he is an invalid who is quite certain that any food that is offered him is indigestible. His soul withers away through its incapacity to believe. The open-minded saint has a healthy spiritual digestion. This does not mean that, in vulgar parlance, he can, "swallow anything"; it does mean a power of discrimination between food offered him,--that he assimilates what is wholesome and rejects the rest. The sceptic is pessimistic as to the existence of any wholesome food at all; he starves his soul for fear that he should believe something that is not true. The saint, with the test of faith, sorts the food proposed to him, and grows in grace, and consequently in the knowledge and the love of God. Open-mindedness is sensitiveness to spiritual impressions, readiness for