give, the dark mystery of life as we know it here and now? Nothing but absolute and indubitable certainty, the certainty of dogma, in the real and uncorrupted sense of that much abused and discredited word, will serve our purpose or God's purpose in the comforting of a stricken world, in the preparation of our manhood for the "rendezvous with death." I cite this matter merely by way of illustration.

Then there is the trend towards worship which is so marked in the Church and among our separated brethren. I am aware that I verge here upon ground which an angel might well fear to tread. And I shall not tread it, save to remind you of the consensus of reports from our Church Chaplains, of this country and of England, as to the inadequacy under war conditions, both at the Front and in the Camps, of those beautiful devotions of a by-gone and monastic age which we have, most of us, come to regard as part of "our incomparable liturgy" when they aren't the Liturgy at all, though they may be incomparable! We have become so used to what I may call, I trust without offence, the spectative attitude of the Choir Offices, that we find it hard to believe that the very boys who delighted to sing Venite and Magnificat, and whose intimate knowledge of Church Services went but little further, want something more direct and more divine when they find themselves at the Front. But I think we ought to realize that when they return, as please God many of them shall, they will not willingly go back to the old idea (I will not say ideal) of worship, which the grim necessity of military life has made them suddenly outgrow.

And they will not be satisfied with the platitudes of a smug religiosity. They have found some real things "over there." They will need and demand real things when they come home. And if they demand them, if they feel the need of them, as they most certainly do (else all report from expert sources is discredited) why should we not all seek after that fulness of life, devotional as well as practical, which alone can satisfy the hunger of the soul for God?

It is not only our boys at the Front who find themselves religiously starving. There are good people in the pews of

many of our Churches of various names, who are slowly dying of spiritual inanition. I do not say that they are not fed, but that they are not filled. Half a loaf is better than no bread: but half a loaf is robbery when you are entitled to the whole.

The Bishop of Chicago, last fall, delivered himself upon a public occasion when there was a large gathering of clergy as well as laity present, of a remarkable confession. He said that in his opinion fully half of the parishes and missions of his diocese were spiritually bankrupt and dead and ought to be buried. Whether the Bishop will proceed to the obsequies remains to be seen! But I submit that when a Bishop of the Church makes such a statement, as it were ex cathedra, and asks that it be spread abroad as his dictum, something is radically wrong, either with the diocese or with the Bishop, or possibly with both. At all events, it is a sign of that sense of failure of which I have already spoken, and for which a remedy must be sought, however desperate it may be when found.

In my mind such considerations are the ground-work for any purposeful thought of the function of the Priest as a Specialist in Religion. For I am about to advance the startling proposition that a Priest of the Church should be concerned first and foremost with Religion: that his social and institutional functions are incidental and ought to be subordinate; that his "spiritual leadership" is the only sort of leadership essentially involved in his Divine Vocation, and that his Ordination is a real setting apart and consecrating of such gifts as he may possess to the direct service of God, and of his fellow men regarded as souls in his cure. He is, of course, a man with a message. The claim needs no laboring, though I shall have somewhat to say presently as to the peculiar character of that message. But he is something more than a herald. In himself, by virtue of his office, he is something more than the exponent of any portion of that office. I have spoken, in passing, of the varied activities that are expected, and, as things stand for the present, required of our clergy. The reason for this is not far to seek. We have been so afraid of the bogie of "Priestcraft" that we have forgotten the real and splendid and

literal (and be it said, unobjectionable) meaning of the word. It is not alone a distinction of form between the Priesthood of the Church and the ministry of any other body of organized Christians. It is a matter of motive, it is a matter of ulterior purpose. The Priest is active and busy with many matters, one is tempted to think sometimes with too many matters, that do not really matter; but he is active and busy always for the greater glory of God. Do not misunderstand me if I say that the glory of God is his first concern, more important even than the salvation of the souls committed to his care, for how better can the glory of God be served by any Priest than in his unceasing efforts to fill up the number of the elect and to hasten God's Kingdom? If the world reverses the duties of man, and makes his duty to his neighbor come before his duty towards God, it is all the more reason why the Church should hold fast to the old order. For there can be no true service of man that does not find its motive and its power in the service of God; there can be no real uplifhting of mankind, unless God is above all the end towards which the uplift tends. I am not unaware that what I am saying sounds strangely out of tune with the modern feeling and methods. But the Church's way is not the way of the world, it never has been; and whenever and wherever the Church has lowered her standard and sought to conform herself to the ways of the world, she has failed to get results, she has lost her power, she has been forced out of the field. We cannot be blind to the fact that in large measure the Church has failed to appeal to modern men and women, and failed just insofar as she has been false to her own peculiar mission. For the Church was founded and exists in the world today for one great and preeminent purpose, Religion-and the work of Religion is not so much to bring men to God, as it is to bring God to men, that He Himself may draw them by the all-compelling power of His Presence unto Himself. It is not we who win souls, who bring them to God, it is the sheer winsomeness and attraction of the Incarnation, which brought God into the world, to be lifted up that He might draw all men unto Himself. That is the Bible way, that is the Church way,

the Sacramental way, the way which it is the peculiar privilege and duty of the Catholic Priest to show to the people of today, who have forgotten it, who see in the Church nothing more than a congeries of men seeking God, if haply they may feel after Him and find Him.

Take, as an apt example, the radical difference between the Catholic doctrine, the Prayer Book doctrine, of the Priesthood, and the theory of the ministry which the most Protestant denominations hold, and which has become so largely the idea that many of our own people hold. How many of our laity realize that the Priest of the Church is exercising a ministry which is radically and essentially different in kind and in degree from that claimed by the preachers of Protestant bodies round about? Do our clergy realize it? Have they made the claim which their ordination entitles them to make? Have they taught our people that the Prayer Book is not indulging in poetical and mystical hyperbole when it speaks of "sacerdotal functions"; when it declares Sunday by Sunday and day by day the power of the Priest to declare absolution; or the limitation of the consecration of the Eucharist to those in Priest's Orders; or the authority of the Priest to teach, to the exclusion even of unordained men who may be more recondite and learned? And may not this lack of assertiveness on the part of the Priesthood be one of the reasons for the comparative failure of the Church to reach the rank and file of the people? After all, even if other things are equal, why should I expect the people of my town, or my neighborhood, to come to me any more than some other minister, unless I have something, not of myself, which they can get nowhere else, and without which they cannot get on? If the Church is but a sect, if its Priesthood is nothing more than an office of ethical and intellectual or social leadership, then the Church had much better withdraw from the unequal and agonizing struggle and leave the field to those who are better able by reason of their numbers, their wealth, their equipment, their popular appeal, to deal with the ethical and social problems of our growing population. But, if the Church has a unique message, if the Church possesses the truth,

as we believe she does; if the Church has, as we believe she has, the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven-then no sacrifice is too great for Priest or people to make in order to present her privileges to the earnest and the religious, both within the fold and without, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear. It is the fault of the Church, as personified in her clergy, that the Catholic Religion has not hitherto been rightly understood by this nation and people. I will narrow the application still more. It is because the Church has put forth no resounding claim to having anything more to give than any other nonRoman body, that she has not attained to greater strength in every part of America. She has been content, for several generations, to be nothing more than a decorated Protestantism, more formal, more dignified, and, yes, more exclusive, and less effective than any other form of Religion round about. It comes as a shock to those outside the Church, and even to some within, when any sacerdotal claim is made; and yet a glance at the Ordinal might long ago have shown them the difference in ethos, the vast difference in claim, the tremendous incompatibility on historical and theological grounds of their conception of the Christian Ministry and that authoritatively and dogmatically set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.

May this not, perhaps, be the reason why, as a matter of actual and painful fact, the people do not esteem Priests in their Office? (if I may be permitted to paraphrase the rubric in the Ordination Service). Isn't it true, that in the average community today a clergyman's personality counts more than his Office? Why is it? Surely this ought not to be so if there is anything in the Catholic conception of the Priesthood as something conferred upon a man, something apart from him but given to him in solemn rites and ceremonies. It cannot be because the men who receive Holy Orders are ignorant of what they assume when they receive the Holy Ghost for their august and awful work. It cannot be that our clergy are merely self-seekers, working for the aggrandizement of their own reputations for leadership, or forcefulness, or even holiness. Perhaps it is because they are timid; perhaps it is because they