hina, Corea, and other Pagan countries.

Among her _confessors_ are numbered those devoted priests who, abandoning
home and family ties, annually go forth to preach the Gospel in foreign
lands. Their worldly possessions are often confined to a few books of
devotion and their modest apparel.

And who is a stranger to her consecrated _virgins_, those sisters of
various Orders who in every large city of Christendom are daily reclaiming
degraded women from a life of shame, and bringing them back to the sweet
influences of religion; who snatch the abandoned offspring of sin from
temporal and spiritual death, and make them pious and useful members of
society, becoming more than mothers to them; who rescue children from
ignorance, and instill into their minds the knowledge and love of God.

We can point to numberless saints also among the laity. I dare assert that
in almost every congregation in the Catholic world, men and women are to
be found who exhibit a fervent piety and a zeal for religion which render
them worthy of being named after the _Annas_, _the Aquilas_ and the
_Priscillas_ of the New Testament. They attract not indeed the admiration
of the public, because true piety is unostentatious and seeks a "life
hidden with Christ in God."(43)

It must not be imagined that, in proclaiming the sanctity of the Church, I
am attempting to prove that all Catholics are holy. I am sorry to confess
that corruption of morals is too often found among professing Catholics.
We cannot close our eyes to the painful fact that too many of them, far
from living up to the teachings of their Church, are sources of melancholy
scandal. "It must be that scandals come, but woe to him by whom the
scandal cometh." I also admit that the sin of Catholics is more heinous in
the sight of God than that of their separated brethren, because they abuse
more grace.

But it should be borne in mind that neither God nor His Church forces any
man's conscience. To all He says by the mouth of His Prophet: "Behold I
set before you the way of life and the way of death." (Jer. xxi. 8.) The
choice rests with yourselves.

It is easy to explain why so many disedifying members are always found
clinging to the robes of the Church, their spiritual Mother, and why she
never shakes them off nor disowns them as her children. The Church is
animated by the spirit of her Founder, Jesus Christ. He "came into this
world to save sinners."(44) He "came not to call the just bu