ocation. The purpose of
"orders" and "congregations" is to provide a suitable environment for
people of a religious temperament whose circumstances permit them to
attend to its development in a more exclusive and, as it were,
professional way. Not, indeed, that all religious-minded persons do, or
ought to, enter into that external state of life; nor that all who so
enter are by temperament and sympathy fitted for it, but that the
institution points to the Church's recognition of what is technically
called the "way of perfection" as something exceptional and
super-normal.

But the Church has a wider vocation than to provide hot-houses for the
forcing of these rare exotics, whom the rough climate of a worldly life
would either stunt or kill. Her first thought is for the multitudes of
average humanity, who are not, and cannot be, in intelligent sympathy
with many of the commands she lays upon them. They are but as children
in religious matters--however cultivated they may chance to be in other
concerns. From such souls God requires faith, and obedience to the
commandments--a due, which, in certain rare crises, may mean heroism and
martyrdom; but He does not expect of them that refinement of sanctity,
that sustained attention to divine things, which depends so largely on
one's natural cast of mind and disposition; and may even be found where
the martyr's temper is altogether wanting. We recognize that there is
certain serviceable, fustian, every-day piety, where, together with a
great deal of spiritual coarseness, insensibility to venial sin and
imperfection, there exists a firm faith that would go cheerfully to the
stake rather than deny God, or offend Him in any grave point that might
be considered a _casus belli_. And on the other hand a certain nicety of
ethical discernment and delicacy of devotion, an anxiety about points of
perfection, is a guarantee rather of the quality of one's piety than of
its depth or strength. The saint is usually one whose piety excels both
in quality and strength; the martyr is often enough a man of many
imperfections and sins, veiling an unsuspected, deep-reaching faith. The
day of persecution has ever been a day of revelation in this respect--a
day when the seemingly perfect have been scattered like chaff before the
wind, while the once thoughtless and careless have stood stubborn before
the blast.

Protestantism of the Calvinistic or Puritan type shows little
consciousness of the distinc