You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house. So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your father who is in heaven (Matt, v, 14-16).

‘You are the light of the world,’ says our Lord to his disciples; and again, ‘I am the Light of the world ‘(John viii, 12). If the world then is to be truly enlightened, these two lights, Master and disciple, must be one; they must glow with a single light and burn with a single flame. The apostle who bears the gospel-message must strive by life and teaching to identify himself with the Lord who sends him.

‘Let your light shine before men that they may glorify your Father who is in heaven.’ These words provide a clue to the life-secret of him whose going leaves a heavy burden of sorrow on our hearts—a sorrow not for him, who has gone to his well-earned rest and rich reward, but for ourselves who have lost him for a time and will surely never in this world see his like again. You knew him and what he was; but there must be many who were puzzled and even astonished at this strange figure walking our streets and appearing to be a visitor from another century who had strayed into our modem world.

It was long a commonplace that the world knew nothing of its greatest men. Now that saying was already current a life-time ago. It is emphatically true to-day, and its value and meaning affect us at the present moment more than ever they did in the past, for this is a moment when men are only publicly known by their names, and when the real personality for which the name stands is hidden under a mass of popular print.

Father Vincent McNabb, the Dominican, who has just passed to his reward, intensely illustrates all this. The greatness of his character, of his learning, his experience, and, above all, his judgement, was something altogether separate from the world about him. Those who knew him marvelled increasingly at every aspect of that personality. But the most remarkable aspect of all was the character of holiness. Everyone who met him, even superficially, discovered this. Those of us who had the honour and the rare advantage of knowing him intimately and well over many years find, upon looking back upon that vast experience, something unique, over and above the learning, over and above the application of that learning to Thomism, which is surely the very heart of the Dominican affair. To that testimony, which so many have the honour and privilege to present, I can add less than nothilng. We know holiness just as we know courage or the unimportant particular of physical beauty and proportion. When we come across that quality of holiness permeating and proceeding from the whole Dominican world, we can only be silent as before some very rare and majestic presentation, wholly foreign to our common experience.

To Father Vincent Nazareth was the norm because God had chosen that kind of life for himself, because it met all the Friar Preacher’s own personal tastes and feelings as to what was most fitting to the dignity of man. Shepherds, fishermen, carpenters, in a self sufficient community not dependent upon foreign markets, ‘the primary craft of landwork and the secondary yet necessary crafts of handwork working together in the primary Co-operative Group, ‘here might be found ‘the divine pattern to souls who were to do the Redeemer’s work in the Redeemer’s way.’

He never put the ‘hand ‘before the ‘land,’ and therefore never fell into the error of William Morris and the artist-craftsmen who followed after him. ‘Home-spun will instruct you better,’ he wrote, ‘than the Declaration of Independence will instruct you on the dignity and rights of man,’ but it was the home-spun of the crofter for home use rather than the material traded in the market that he had in mind.

Father Vincent’s appreciation of hand work and land work may, perhaps, best be conveyed by his relationship with Ditchling, and that may ibe seen in his letters after he had ceased to visit us.

‘Your gift of Whitsun cream was more than welcome! It was, oi course, one of the best things that even Ditchling could give. But it had memories in its gift; and they were even better than milk and honey. How irresistibly it brought back the Ditchling I first knew, and loved with the intensity of a first love. I can imagine that many a man marries the girl he loves not merely because he loves her, but because his love of her, or her love of him, has saved him from some fall ...

The man who lays down moral principles runs the risk of laying down platitudes. When a priest meddles with the affairs of this world he is regarded—rightly—as being professionally incapable of laying down anything except moral principles. It is not surprising, therefore, that he should be regarded as a purveyor of platitudes. He may indeed be regarded as professionally incapable of saying anything rational at all; but with this error I am not immediately concerned. On the other hand, to call priests platitudinous is not, as such, to convict them of talking rubbish; if it were so, their case would indeed be pretty hopeless.

Yet even granting the connection of moral principles and platitudes and the distinction of these from nonsense, it does not follow that :t is good to be thought platitudinous, still less that it is good to acquiesce in the imputation. Much of what I have to say in this article will sound platitudinous, but it is a pity that :t should. Platitudes, if true at all, are truths worn smooth like old coins—truths ready for falsification. That honesty is a virtue, is true and platitudinous, but that it simply consists in paying your bills and avoiding theft, as the platitude tends to suppose, is not true. A truth gone dull is a truth nearly lost. But to grasp a truth closely is to lose a platitude, is to be free from a platitude. This freedom, freedom not of or from but by thought, Father Vincent won for himself and expressed for others. The proof is that whereas many people said he talked nonsense, no one accused him of talking platitudes.

We, however, must run the risk. We are concerned with moral principles, and the principle of anything is its starting-point; and once things have started the starting point is taken for granted. It is very likely a platitude. If you become conscious of it you may say, shamefacedly, ‘Of course that's obvious, a platitude’; or, if you want to question it, you may call it a prejudice. In either case it is presumed to be presumed.