is with the lost and not at all with themselves. I not only believe in the Church, and am glad of it, and not ashamed to say that I am a Catholic, I am proud of and grateful for its many ideal virtues. I hold that its sisterhoods are the angelic forces of heaven to save this land through the ministries of Catholic womanhood, not through clubs and women's rights abominations, but through the simple virtues of patient Catholic womanhood. I have known hundreds and hundreds of Catholic priests who themselves were patron saints of God, but they all, as a rule, have emphasized too much the virtues of Catholic faith and not halt enough the practical Christian virtues of common life alike for men and women, and the need of these every day and every hour of human life. These things should ye have done, but not have left the others undone. I would have every priest and Catholic feel as if Jesus Himself were beside him and in him, not merely on the altars, saying over again His blessed words of beatitude for the simple virtues of daily life, and know always that he who is not against us is for us, remembering, ever His words to Peter, "What is that to thee, follow thou me." I know of no- class of men that manifest such perpetual curiosity as to the actions of men and women as is usually manifested by the priesthood; nor can it always be said that such curiosity springs from exalted motives. Mind your own business, and remember the Lord's words to Peter of old.

It is my belief that had the Catholic Church minded its own business and kept to its own highest ideals, that had it, during these last sixteen hundred years pursued its own apostolic and spiritual mission, as very largely before the spoiling touch of Constantine, going forth publicly and privately preaching the gospel of Christ and not so absolutely absorbed in its own physical advantages and temporal positions of power, the many nations of the old world now lost to its blessings, lost to the faith and more than half dead every way, might still be alive in faith and working powers for the good of the spiritual life of the world. Christians, Catholics and others do not attain eminence by seeking to obtain it, but by seeking "first the kingdom of God." So in our own land to-day, had the great Church of God been true to its Master, it would not have lost twelve millions of its children, but have held them in its fold and by its gains of another twelve millions would long ere this have held the balance of political power; might have dictated terms to Presidents, have commanded hs full share of the school tax, and have had Catholic governors, judges and party leaders galore. Pardon me this freedom and think it over now and then. William Henry Thokne.

BELIEF AND PRACTICE.

When we assume belief and practice to be reciprocal terms, as implied in the dissenter's conception of a "Christian"—though formal logic contemplates the union derisively—we are in the way of damaging the whole fabric of belief, which in its essence proposes to us the things worthy to be done or held; as practice in its several degrees represents the attempt to scale the heights whereon belief dwells.

Our own conceptions—bearing in mind what St. James says about faith with good works—while holding to the idea that the highest form of Christianity is that in which practice keeps abreast of belief, also recognizes the possibility of a lapse in practice without impairing the integrity of the belief, as instanced in the statement that a just man may fall seven times a day and yet remain entitled to a reputation for sound belief. A further illustration of the impracticable notion which holds belief and practice to be reciprocal—a notion evolved from the necessity of making reasonable the conception of justification by faith alone—is found in the case of John Wyckliffe, a fourteenth century priest, whose reputed statement that rites celebrated by one in mortal sin were invalid, exposed him to the easy reply that in such an event there was no certainty of anything being valid, since there was no means of determining the precise moral condition of a celebrant, and that such a situation was intolerable and opposed to all reason and common sense. The necessity, when holding such a repellant conception, of making belief and practice outwardly conform leads to a profession of formal compliance and an easy descent to hypocrisy of the unctuous variety. Still the unceasing enunciation of the opposing idea does sometimes fasten itself into a liberal habit of behavior and we have the hypocrisy of the Publican leaning too far backward because it has been suggested to him that the Pharisee has a converse inclination to bend too far in the opposite direction. There is a certain vulgarity in this tendency of the Publican not evident in the Pharisee, whose chief fault is the dry formalism he mistakes for practice; a formalism which humoring the arrogant, casuistical self within prevents him from ever feeling genuine compunction. The vulgarity of the Publican, on the contrary, being the honest expression of his nature, when the time comes, does not prevent him from feeling real compunction, and

consequently lifts his practice nearer the level of belief than that of the refined Pharisee. There are many men, however, not Pharisees, who revolt at the value set on the Publican's belated virtue and wish it were less conspicuously brought to our attention.

We know a brilliant man of theosophical views who, in speaking of this question, once said: "I have great respect for the Catholic Church, its powerful and intelligent organization, its age and venerable character, its impressive institutions and great moral influence, but," and here his features took on a melancholy aspect, "I can't understand why there are so many rough people in it, so many who profess to believe, but whose practice is wretched in the extreme."

"Your dilemma is appreciated," I answered, "though it may be that the hammering and grinding process to which those rough people and their ancestors submitted, to preserve their faith, has something to do with their present lack of refinement, and inadequate practice,—admitting for an instant that we have more than our proportionate share—and yet does it not seem quite natural that such people should find a place in the Catholic Church, when we recollect that Christ came on earth not to save people already saved, but to save those most in need of salvation—a description which fits the rough people weighing so heavily on your consciousness."

"There is something in that," said he, and the conversation ended.

When we have expressed all that can be said tending to bridge the chasm between belief and average practice, there remains within us a residuum of very human feeling which cries out for the minimum of the roughness ot the Publican mentioned and a maximum of those whose belief and practice are nearly of a height. Accepting the interpretation that a man's belief ordinarily is better than his practice, how much more enthusiastically do we rally rcund a chosen leader when we know that his life is shaped on the exact model of his belief. There is more satisfaction in contemplating Paul as a practical Apostle than Paul as the energetic Jewish believer bent on rooting out the new sect of Christians. Cardinal Newman has a sermon touching this topic worth everyone's reading. He says truly enough that men's practice must in the end nearly approach their belief else a bad man suddenly converted who, dying shortly afterward, happened to gain heaven, would find himself uncomfortable in an atmosphere of virtue he was not accustomed to. He might have sensations such as those felt by a converted citizen of the levee when that gentleman was first introduced to the calm and unexciting precincts of a mission coffee house, its walls hung with sober pictures and its tables covered with unsensational prints.

Our own experience sometimes sheds an odd light on the subject, illustrating the animal instinct which drives us in the absence of restraining bit and bridle to liberate the jocose and coarser self which in its mad flight glories in exhibiting our lower nature in large advertisement on every unoccupied fence or tumble-down tenement.

It requires an impelling force to utter the reluctant criticism that the world of the Broad Grin and Animal-Comic seems a more easy and natural environment to many of us, than the world inhabited by ideas and sentiments born of contact with our spiritual selves.

When we examine the devious ways by which practice eludes the obligations of belief we get a clear idea of how far we hare gone with the Publican and yet contrived to obviate the necessity of publishing the recantation which ultimately brought the Hebrew sinner to the gates of mercy and repentance. As for example, to refer to the things which distinguish our public gatherings of a social character, what a jar and concussion of all that is respectable occurs when on conclusion of a exhortation to rise to better things, wre are compelled to listen to disreputable ballads and vulgar recitations less in value and as foreign to the occasion as would be the introduction of a character from Tom Jones, or a scene from a modern psychological drama. There is a stupefying flavor in such proceedings which urges the auditor to pinch himself to be assured that he is not asleep, so swiftly do our impulses contradict and traduce each other.

The Missionary, a monthly publication of the Paulists,—the sort of paper St. Paul himself would have published had movable types been invented fourteen centuries earlier—intimates that true religion would soon prevail everywhere if the practice of Christians were on terms of familiarity with their acknowledged belief. If we stand in our own light, if we block our own progress, we are persuaded it is by no means intentional, but in some sort due to the powerful influences around us, from which we cannot hope to escape entirely.

Laymen with greater opportunities see and hear things beyond the range of the ordinary clergyman's observation. One of the obstacles to the progress of belief which the layman encounters is the anecdotal habit widely popular in the social life of this continent. A good story teller is invited everywhere and he is applauded in proportion to his ability to echo the sentiments of his hearers. In lasciviousness and obscenity the anecdotal habit had acquired a bad pre-eminence. Its well nigh universal nature is its most appalling feature. An enthusiast on one occasion said, "Let me write the songs of a people, and I care not who makes their laws" but in the twentieth century the saying needs modification to the extent of substituting the familiar tales of a modern people for the popular poetry on which he laid so much emphasis.

Boccaccio's "Decameron" and Balzac's "Droll Stories" typify the unclean spirit in printed literature. In Europe their successors have acquired a recognized standing, though here, thanks to a more virile intelligence, they have gained no recognized foothold. The anecdotist of this type presents his works in the garb of pretended humor and thus degrades the true comic spirit which is no enemy to belief and practice. Humor is the clarifying ingredient of life; nowise the boon companion of impurity; is invigorating in its many changing moods, and conducive to a cheerful and sane conception of life. The insidious enemy alike of practice and humor is the pornographic anecdote, the concrete representation of our baser self, told on all sides of us with every attractive detail likely to give it ready acceptance, by people who pass as leaders and bulwarks of society.

Morality, sitting in condemnatory supreme court on French realists, denounces subtly sensuous works, flagitiously at variance with a delicate appreciation of human life and its rights, parading in the rags of indecent expression, declining even to pay the tribute which vice has immemorially paid to virtue; yet these homicidal realists are little more disreputable in their choice of ideas, and if anything more refined in their expression, than the authors of the indecent anecdotes which form the principal item of five out of six conversations carried on by men of the average sort when the restraint imposed by the presence of women is removed. The specification of particulars would be a display calculated unnecessarily to stir the muddy waters, though "stag" parties held under the auspices of societies semi-pagan in their origin, occasionally seem orgies of indelicacy, where anecdotes, songs and recitations circulate amid applause which, in a general way, tends to emphasize the conditions herein barely indicated. Dim echoes of the worship offered to the sensual deities, revived in the twentieh century to preside at such feasts, sometimes effect unsuspected entrance to the precincts reserved for Christian gatherings and elicit the approval of dubious laughter from the Animal-Comic, while stirring to wrathful contempt the larger body better acquainted with the demoralization the practice scatters down its pathway. The literary ability employed in this service has the whimsical habit of selecting as chief actors in its dialogues representatives of nationalities in no way distinguished for the tendencies described, thus adding a tone of truculence to the other evidences of antisocial leanings. There is a rising tide of the lascivious in anecdote and story on all sides and with little visible opposition it pursues its course, sapping and weakening the stamina of younger men, until the situation loudly cries for an opposing tide of the aggressive virtues. Contemptuous satraps of the prurient oligarchy now ruling the "Eldest Son of the Church," former chivalrous France, uninterruptedly kick the prostrate bodies of a reputedly Christian people; and the scene is witness to a pornographic triumph over spineless virtue, and manhood minus