ce of priesthood for Me, and thou hast forgotten the law of thy
God, I will also forget thy children."(512)

"To you," says our Lord to His Apostles, "it is given to know the mystery
of the Kingdom of God, to the rest, in parables." The Priests of the New
Law, like the Apostles, are the custodians of the mysteries of religion.

Now we know that the knowledge of God's Kingdom is not imparted to us by
inspiration or revelation. Christ does not personally teach us as He
taught His Apostles. It is by hard study that the knowledge of His law is
acquired by us. He does not lift us up on Angels' wings to the spiritual
Parnassus. It is only by the royal road of earnest labor that we can
attain those heights which will enable us to contemplate the Kingdom of
heaven and describe it to others.

As physician of the soul, he must be conversant with its various
distempers and must know what remedy is to be applied in each particular
case. If society justly holds the unskilful physician responsible for the
fatal consequences of his malpractice, surely God will call to a strict
account the spiritual physician who, through criminal ignorance,
prescribes injudicious remedies to the souls of the patients committed to
his charge.

As judge of souls, he must know when to bind and when to loose, when to
defer and when to pronounce sentence of absolution. If nothing is so
disastrous to the Republic as an incompetent judge, whose decisions,
though involving life and death, are rendered at hap-hazard and not in
accordance with the merits of the case, so nothing is more detrimental to
the Christian commonwealth than an ignorant priesthood, whose decisions
injuriously affect the salvation of souls.

The advocate in our courts of justice feels bound in conscience and in
honor to study the case of his client with the utmost diligence, and to
defend him before the jury with all the eloquence he can master. And yet
the suit may not involve more than a brief imprisonment or even a limited
fine.

But the Priest, like Moses, stands before God to intercede for His people,
and before the people to advocate the cause of God. He not only ascends
daily the altar to plead for the people and to cry out with the prophet,
"Spare, O Lord, spare Thy people, and give not Thy inheritance to
reproach;" but every Sunday he mounts the pulpit to vindicate the claims
which God has on His subjects. Certainly, if an attorney is bound to study
his client's cause befor