once to interview a great
doctor about the terrible case of a woman of high social position who
had become the slave of drink. The doctor was a man of great force and
ability, and of unwearying devotion; but he was what would be called a
sceptic and a materialist. The priest asked if the case was hopeless;
the great doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Yes," he said,
"pathologically speaking, it is hopeless; there may be periods of
recovery, but the course that the case will normally run will be a
series of relapses, each more serious and of longer duration than the
last." "Is there no chance of recovery on any line that you could
suggest?" said the priest. The two looked at each other, both good men
and true. "Well," said the doctor after a pause, "this is more in your
line than mine; the only possible chance lies in the will, and that can
only be touched through an emotion. I have seen a religious emotion
successful, where everything else failed." The priest smiled and said,
"I suppose that would seem to you a species of delusion? You would not
admit that there was any reality behind it?" "Yes," said the doctor, "a
certain reality, no doubt; the emotional processes are at present
somewhat obscure from the scientific point of view: it is a forlorn
hope." "Yes," said the priest, "and it is thus the kind of task for
which I and those of my calling feel bound to volunteer."

Of course one of the difficulties that the priest has to struggle
against is his inheritance. If we trace back the vocation of the priest
to the earliest times, we find their progenitors connected with some of
the darkest and saddest things in human history. They are of the same
tribe as wizards and magicians, sorcerers and medicine-men, the
celebrators of cruel and unholy rites. The priests of Moloch, of
Chemosh, of Baal, are the dark and ancient ancestors of the same
vocation. All who have trafficked in the terrors of mankind, who have
gained power by trading on superstitious imaginings, who have professed
to propitiate wrathful and malignant spirits, to stand between men and
their dreadful Maker--all these have contributed their share to the
dark and sad burden which the priest has to bear. As soon as man,
rising out of pure savagery, began to have any conception of the laws
of nature, he found in himself a deep instinct for happiness, a terror
of suffering and death; yet, at the same time, he found himself set in
a world where afflictions seemed to be