Like the air of heaven, which ascends the highest mountain and descends into the deepest valley, vivifying the face of nature, so has the Christian religion permeated every stratum of society, purifying and invigorating the moral world.

It has a message for the capitalist and the laborer, for the master and the servant, for the rich and for the poor. In the words of St. James, it warns the capitalist against the sin of labor-oppression: "Behold the hire of your laborers who have reaped down your fields, which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." It admonishes the laborer to perform his work with fidelity, "not serving to the eye, as it were pleasing men, but doing the will of God from the heart."2 The most enlightened political economist never formulated a sentence so simple, so comprehensive, so effectual, as is contained in these words: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. This principle, if properly applied, would solve every labor problem that perplexes the minds of statesmen.

It charges "the rich of this world not to be highminded nor to trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God who giveth us all abundantly to enjoy. To do good, to become rich in good works, to give easily, to communicate to others, to lay up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.”3

1 St. James V., 4.

2 Eph. VI., 6.

3I. Tim. VI., 17-19,

It preaches words of comfort to the poor man. It has exploded the false maxim of the world that estimates a man's dignity by his dollars and his degradation by his poverty. It has declared that a man may be scant in this world's goods, and yet be rich and honorable in the sight of God. It cheers him with the old and familiar but always refreshing story of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, being rich, became poor for our sakes, that through His poverty we might be rich.2

The exposition of practical duty, as we have seen in the foregoing pages, was wholly unconnected with the life of the Pagan priest and the religious ceremonies of the Pagan temple. Happily, the same cannot be affirmed of our Christian priests and temples. As Mr. Lecky justly observes: "To amalgamate these two spheres (of worship and morals), to incorporate moral culture with religion was among the most important achievements of Christianity.... Unlike all Pagan religions, it made moral teaching a main feature of its clergy, moral discipline the leading object of its services, moral dispositions the necessary condition of the due performance of its rights."3 The one great aim of our Christian ceremonial worship, of our Sacraments and Sacrifice, our preaching and priesthood, is the development of personal holiness.

The moral power exercised by a good priest in his parish is incalculable. The priest is always a

1James II.

II. Cor. VIII., 9.

3 Hist. of European Morals, II., 2.

mysterious being in the eyes of the world. Like his Divine Master, he "is set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted." Various opinions are formed of him. Some say of him as was said of our Saviour: "He is a good man. And others say: no, but he seduceth the people." those who know him best. may be by many that are strangers to him and to his sacred character; but he has been too prominent a factor in the civilization of mankind and the advancement of morality ever to be ignored.

He is loved most by Hated or despised he

The life of a missionary priest is never written, nor can it be. He has no Boswell. His biographer may record the priest's public and official acts. He may recount the churches he erected, the schools he founded, the works of religion and charity he inaugurated and fostered, the sermons he preached, the children he catechised; the converts he received into the fold; and this is already a great deal. But it only touches upon the surface of that devoted life. There is no memoir of his private daily life of usefulness and of his sacred and confidential relations with his flock. All this is hidden with Christ in God, and is registered only by His recording angel.

"The civilizing and moralizing influence of the clergyman in his parish," says Mr. Lecky, "the simple, unostentatious, unselfish zeal with which he educates the ignorant, guides the erring, comforts 1 Luke II., 34.

2 John VII., 12.

the sorrowing, braves the horrors of pestilence, and sheds a hallowing influence over the dying hour, the countless ways in which, in his little sphere, he allays evil passions and softens manners, and elevates and purifies those around him; all these things, though very evident to the detailed observer, do not stand out in the same vivid prominence in historical records, and are continually forgotten by historians.'

The priest is Christ's unarmed officer of the law. He is more potent in repressing vice than a band of constables. His only weapon is his voice; his only badge of authority his sacred office. Like the fabled Neptune putting Eolus to flight and calming the troubled waves, the priest quiets many a domestic storm, subduing the winds of passion, reconciling the jarring elements of strife, healing dissensions, preventing divorce, and arresting bloodshed.

He is the daily depository of his parishioners' cares and trials, anxieties and fears, afflictions and temptations, and even of their sins. They come to him for counsel in doubt, for spiritual and even temporal aid. If he cannot suppress, he has at least the consolation of mitigating the moral evil around him.

We must not overlook the strong inducements that the Christian teacher holds out to his disciples for the practice of virtue in the pressing motives he offers for its due fulfilment. In this respect Christianity has a great advantage over all systems of

1European Morals, I., 152.

religion. The Stoic was incited to a moral life by a sentiment of duty; the Epicurean, by pleasure and self-interest; the Mohammedan, by the hope of sensual delights; the Jew, by servile fear; but the Christian is drawn chiefly by filial love. He is far, indeed, from excluding other motives. He, as well as the Stoic, is influenced by the intrinsic beauty of virtue and by the enormity of sin which he knows could be atoned for only by the blood of his Saviour. He is actuated in the pursuit of virtue by an enlightened self-interest; for he is taught that "Godliness is profitable to all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.' He is moved by a salutary fear of future retribution. But his predominant motive for the practice of piety is love for his Heavenly Father, and love is the strongest of all moral forces. No one can deny that the devotedness of a child to a father is more tender, more profound, more disinterested, and more enduring than the devotedness of a servant to a master, or of a hireling to an employer. A son obeys his father with more alacrity than a servant does his master; and in disobeying his father, he not only transgresses parental authority, but does violence to the instincts of filial affection.

Now, the Christian Church is represented to us as a family whose Father is God, and whose members are His adopted children. "You are no more strangers and foreigners," says St. Paul, "but you

1 I. Tim. IV., 8.