In Advent we go back to the very beginning of the Gospel to St John the Baptist and his message. He has been called the school-master of the Apostles, and later apostles and preachers ought to study no less intently in his school. First, because he was the fore-runner of our blessed Lord, come to make his path straight and smooth before him. He was the remover of obstacles in that path, that would be in the way when the Lord came. This is not the highest power, but a very necessary one. His work was not so much that of a sacrament, which confers grace, as of a sacramental. The preaching an teaching, the rites and ceremonies of religious life with its specia clothes and organization, is of the same kind. All that has tne power of disposing men to come to our Lord; it stands as a witness to his truth and goodness.