lot, and we are continually called upon to do that which the religious, for good and lawful reasons, cannot undertake. One sometimes hears of dissatisfaction at their having missions which are flourishing so far as this world's resources are concerned. It may be that it is their hard work and self-denial which has caused their missions to become so; but whether this is the full explanation or not, there is no reason why we should envy them: rather they should envy us, in the difficult and uphill work which has been laid upon us by the providence of God.

Nor can we refuse to do it on the plea that our spiritual life will suffer. Such will indeed seem at first sight to be the case. Consider the example of a busy mission in London or one of our large towns, especially if it be a single-handed one. On an ordinary Sunday there a priest cannot possibly devote much time to his own religious exercises. He will perhaps have to say two masses, to preach possibly more than once, to catechise children, and give Benediction, and to administer the sacraments of Confession, Holy Communion, and Baptism at different times of the day. Manifestly his own meditation, spiritual reading and the like have to be omitted. Even his Office is said with difficulty, a great part of it perhaps at the end of a long day's work when he is hardly physically fit to say it, and might with advantage profit by our English privilege of substituting the Rosary. Often on the Monday he will not have sufficiently recovered and has as far as possible to take a day's rest. Thus his regular spiritual exercises are at best limited to five days in the week, on the last of which—the Saturday—the pressure of the coming Sunday work is already making itself felt, with the duties of preparing sermons, and perhaps sitting long hours in the Confessional. This weekly break is an effective hindrance to any strict adherence to a rule of life, and prevents the personal self-sanctification of a secular priest from being so systematic as that of a religious. Indeed, even on an average week-day, it is impossible to adhere at all rigidly to any self-made rule. If a priest has to go out to say mass at a Convent, it is hard to avoid his daily meditation being performed in a perfunctory fashion, or sometimes even omitted altogether. If he has to say mass twice or three times a week at ten o'clock and on other mornings at eight—as is often the case in town missions—regularity of life disappears. Then much of his pastoral work—such as visitations, sick calls, or unexpected calls to the Confessional—is entirely uncertain and variable as to time, and cannot be foreseen. Moreover, the anxieties of a priest are very distracting to the even tenor of our spiritual life. Add to this that much of his recreation has to be taken late in the evening, as being the only time that his friends in the parish are at home, and it is difficult to refuse all invitations to dine out, or his position among his parishioners would suffer: yet the evening is the time of day when naturally a spiritual man wishes to be recollected.

What then? Are the secular clergy to surrender their own sanctification for the sake of their work? The question has only to be asked to be answered in the negative. The dignity of the priesthood and the pastoral office is enough to put such an idea out of our thoughts. Some of the greatest saints of the Church—including the Apostles themselves—belonged to the secular clergy: and it would be manifest blasphemy to look on their state as anything but a school of holiness. Certainly we must look for an answer in a different direction from this.

Three different answers may be suggested, each of which can lead us to important considerations.

In the first place we have the three great Evangelical Virtues, Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, as practised by the priest, which inform their whole lives and give a character and greatness which overshadows everything that they do. These are so important that separate Conferences will be given to the consideration of each. Let it suffice here, then, to enumerate them as the first answer to the difficulty we are considering, of how the secular priesthood is to be made a school of holiness.

The second answer is the spirit which prompts us to do our work. It is a spirit of complete self-sacrifice and trust in God, who will in his own way watch over His priests and ministers, so that if they have sacrificed themselves for the sake of preaching the Gospel of His kingdom, He will in return take them under his protection and accomplish their sanctification in His own manner and in His own time.

Let us take comfort when we examine our lives. We may find that our daily exercises have been very irregular; that our meditation has been cut short, or elbowed out; our spiritual reading has often been postponed till late at night, or performed in perfunctory or distracted manner, or not infrequently omitted; our Office has been said at odd times whenever we could fit it in; perhaps we have not always been regular even at our daily mass. The cause of much of this has no doubt been culpable; we might have been less irregular than we have been. But if we can truly say that it was in great measure due to the unequal pressure of our work, and that the primary cause is traceable to the necessary sacrifice of our ministry we can feel confidence in the result; for whatever our shortcomings in detail, we have in the main been practising the highest kind of self-sacrifice, and the kind which is specially characteristic of our vocation as secular priests. This is the advice insisted on in the Imitation of Christ: [5] "Evil ought not to be done either for anything in the world, or for the love of any man; but for the profit of one that stands in need, a good work is sometimes freely to be omitted, or rather to be changed for a better. For by doing thus, a good work is not lost, but is changed into a better. Without charity the outward work profiteth nothing; but whatever is done out of charity, be it never so little and contemptible, all becomes fruitful. For God regards more with how much affection and love a person performs a work than how much he does."

But if we have often to set aside our rule of life, and postpone or give up our religious exercises at the call of charity, we should be careful to maintain strictness in not giving them up for other reasons, as, for example, for the sake of some recreation, or through pure laziness. Here also we may quote the Imitation: [6] "If for piety's sake, or with a design to the profit of our neighbour we sometimes omit our accustomed exercises, it may afterwards be easily recovered. But if through a loathing of mind or negligence it be lightly let alone, it is no small fault and will prove harmful." So long as we act strictly on this principle, we shall find that hard work, however distracting, is not a bar to holiness. "Let no one think," says Cardinal Manning, [7] "that a busy life cannot be a holy life. The busiest life may be full of piety. Holiness consists not in doing uncommon things, but in doing all common things with an uncommon fervour. No life was ever more full of work and of its interruptions than the life of our Lord and His Apostles. They were surrounded by the multitude, and 'there were many coming and going, and they had not so much as time to eat' (St. Mark vi. 31). Nevertheless, a busy life" (he adds) "needs a punctual and sustained habit of prayer. It is neither piety nor charity for a priest to shorten his preparation before mass or his thanksgiving after it