ish fever cut off between Liverpool and Leeds
thirty priests and more, young men in the flower of their days, old
men who seemed entitled to some quiet time after their long toil.
There was a bishop cut off in the North; but what had a man of his
ecclesiastical rank to do with the drudgery and danger of sick calls,
except that Christian faith and charity constrained him? Priests
volunteered for the dangerous service. It was the same on the first
coming of the cholera, that mysterious awe-inspiring infliction.
If priests did not heartily believe in the Creed of the Church,
then I will say that the remark of the apostle had its fullest
illustration:--"If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are
of all men most miserable." What could support a set of hypocrites in
the presence of a deadly disorder, one of them following another in
long order up the forlorn hope, and one after another perishing? And
such, I may say, in its substance, is every mission-priest's life. He
is ever ready to sacrifice himself for his people. Night and day,
sick or well himself, in all weathers, off he is, on the news of a
sick call. The fact of a parishioner dying without the sacraments
through his fault is terrible to him; why terrible, if he has not a
deep absolute faith, which he acts upon with a free service?
Protestants admire this, when they see it; but they do not seem to
see as clearly, that it excludes the very notion of hypocrisy.

Sometimes, when they reflect upon it, it leads them to remark on the
wonderful discipline of the Catholic priesthood; they say that no
Church has so well ordered a clergy, and that in that respect it
surpasses their own; they wish they could have such exact discipline
among themselves. But is it an excellence which can be purchased? is
it a phenomenon which depends on nothing else than itself, or is it
an effect which has a cause? You cannot buy devotion at a price. "It
hath never been heard of in the land of Chanaan, neither hath it been
seen in Theman. The children of Agar, the merchants of Meran, none
of these have known its way." What then is that wonderful charm,
which makes a thousand men act all in one way, and infuses a prompt
obedience to rule, as if they were under some stern military
compulsion? How difficult to find an answer, unless you will allow
the obvious one, that they believe intensely what they profess!

I cannot think what it can be, in a day like this, which keeps up the
preju