ng might afford.

Let us see how this works out in practice. The unctions of
ordination are scarcely dry on your hands till you begin to
realise what you never realised before--viz., that in the most
literal sense of the word you belong to the Church Militant.

You go out from college, you are quickly confronted with
opposition. At once your brain begins to hew arguments of massive
solidity; had you but the skill with which to hurl them you would
overwhelm the stoutest foe. This skill you have not got, you
never mastered the sciences by which you could smite the
aggressor. With rage you, perhaps for the first time, realise
your own deficiency. Your arms are pinioned by helpless ignorance
of the use of what should be one of the first weapons of the
priest. Your thoughts now struggle for birth, but are fated to
die stillborn, while the foe laughs you in the face.

Is this not a sad pity: _yet it is an everyday fact_.

There are sixty millions of Irish money lying in the banks
throughout this country, yet the nation is perishing from
atrophy, starving for want of commercial nourishment. If the gold
now piled in banks were but circulated through the channels of
industry, every limb of national life would pulse with new
vigour, the remotest corner of the land would feel the influence
of the golden current; so, within the mind of the priest may be
hoarded treasures of deepest learning, but unless he has the art
of minting and circulating through his parish the glittering coin
of polished thought, though his brain be an _El Dorado_ of
wealth, that parish will run into spiritual bankruptcy.

"You are the Light of the World," said Christ to His Apostles.
The same, in effect, He will say to the young priest the day he
sets out to continue the work they began; but how will that
light, of which he is the bearer, reach the darkened world for
which God has destined it if he neglects to arm himself with the
light-diffuser: the only medium of communication between him and
his people? Though the sun is poised in the firmament above us,
this earth would remain for ever wrapped in midnight darkness
were it not that there is an interposing medium--whatever it
be--to waft to us its heat waves and carry its splendours to the
tiniest nook and crevice. The language, its graces and powers,
are for the priest the instruments by which darkened minds are
illumined, by which the clear rays of living truth are flashed
into their gloom.

Th