sins, as a help to living a good life, and as a step on the road to eternal life.

We could leave the last word to James Stephens as he expressed it in ‘The Fullness of Time’, a remarkably daring poem in the Ireland of 1912:

On a rusty iron throne

Past the furthest star of space

I saw Satan sit alone,

Old and haggard was his face;

For his work was done and he

Rested in eternity.

And to him from out the sun

Came his father and his friend

Saying, now the work is done

Enmity is at an end:

And he guided Satan to

Paradises that he knew.

Gabriel without a frown,

Uriel without a spear,

Raphael came singing down

Welcoming their ancient peer,

And they seated him beside

One who had been crucified.WASHINGTON  State and local police officers fail to notify federal authorities about encounters with possible terror suspects up to 10 times a day, a senior FBI official said. The rate of failure represents missed opportunities to verify possible matches to suspects on the government's terrorist watch list or to remove individuals from the list whose names had been added by mistake, Leonard Boyle, director of the bureau's Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), said in an interview. Police are asked to contact the center when routine computerized background checks on individuals — who may have violated traffic rules or been involved in a domestic disturbance — trigger electronic alerts from the TSC. The alerts indicate possible matches to individuals on the government's watch list of an estimated 400,000 people.