hunting, there is often a minute inquiry as to a man's ability as a preacher, financier, organizer, or-Saints defend us!-a "mixer." How seldom do we hear it asked if he is a lover of souls.

I cannot very readily believe that any priest is a success in the sight of the great High Priest, unless he is a lover of souls. Somehow I think that ought to come first of all, and be the centre upon which all the other qualifications must hang.

One of my Catholic lay friends said a significant thing to me years ago: "There is a deepening and widening gulf constantly growing between the clergy and laity." I think he was right. The laity of our Church do not seem to have the affection for their clergy, that members of other religious bodies have, and one is forced to think that very many of our clergy are indifferent to the laity, except as they are useful in forwarding the business of parish life. And I have learned from many years of contact with them, that our laity have been, and are, sadly neglected.

The astonishing thing about the situation is that the clergy who do not seem to understand the lay mind, and the lay attitude, were themselves once laymen. Perhaps the explanation of that is the one given by my bishop to a complaining vestry. He told them that if the quality of the clergy he was able to get for them was poor, it was because the laity furnished such poor material. Perhaps if the best of our laymen offered themselves for the priesthood, they would understand their people better.

At diocesan conventions, retreat breakfasts, etc., one hears a great deal of complaint about the laity. No doubt much of it is well founded, but there is this to be said for them they are neglected, ill-instructed, and priest-ridden.

1. The Neglected Laity.

One frequently in a new parish comes across a communicant, who tells you that you are the first rector who

has called. I am not a believer in the calling, which keeps the rector constantly on the streets. But every parishioner, good or bad, should be called on once or twice a year as a matter of form; and oftener if there is special need, like sickness, trouble, or poverty. There is the opportunity, too, which ought to be seized in some cases, of giving individual instruction, and private exhortation. But all parishioners should be well enough acquainted with their pastor to feel on friendly terms. They should feel that he was really interested in them, and their spiritual interests his first concern. I heard a vestryman, who was loyal to his rector, and in entire sympathy with his teaching, say: "He is all right, and we like him, but he is not interested in us." And because of that lack of interest, he was unable to carry out his program of Catholic advance.

I admit there are trying persons who expect to have the rector call on Monday, if they do not appear in church on Sunday. Such a person needs to be kindly labored with, as does the one who only comes to church the Sunday after the rector has made a visit, to return his call as it were. I am not putting in a plea for the constant and wearing calling some clergy seem to think necessary, but I am trying to press home the idea that the priest and his people ought to be thoroughly good friends, and the priest must expect to make the first advances. Church-people newly come to town ought indeed to show up at church at once, but in many cases they do not, and it is the business of the pastor to look them up, and make it easy for them to make themselves at home in a new parish. It is often a curious shyness that keeps them away.

Few of us stop to think how shy people are about religion. There are many souls who long for some one to speak to them about their souls. And who should this be, but the parish priest?

One gets an enormous amount of enlightment if one goes about the parish, asking why people do not come to church,

to communion or confession. Mountains of ignorance and prejudice can often be rolled away in a short interview, if one breaks the ice and seeks to find out the cause of neglect of spiritual duties.

In these days, if pastors went after souls as they do for money or diocesan honors, they might "go over the top" in the spiritual growth of parish life. "Fishers of men" was the expression our Lord used to denote the work to which He called His disciples. We get a very vivid picture of the careful, interested, anxious, laborious and patient parish priest from the term, "fisherman." Modified by the word "men," we do not get the picture of fishers after honors, salaries, and notoriety. If our Lord is any pattern for the priest, we have the example of one who sought nothing but men. Unhampered by family, friends, earthly considerations, and ambitions, He sought after men.

A priest may find some unexpected treasures in his parish if he looks for them. Some years ago it was my lot for a few months to help in another man's parish. I found there a boy, in the Sunday School for some years, who had not been baptized. He was sixteen years old, and clever though of a poor family, and a working boy. I spoke about him to the priest, and he said, "You can prepare him, he smells so." Some years later the parish priest wrote me that Sydney was his "right hand man," the most reliable and helpful young man in the parish.

2. The Ill-instructed Laity.

I think nothing astonished me more when I went out after my ordination among church people, than the discovery that they knew next to nothing about the Church, or why they were Episcopalians. It is quite true that I never learned anything from my Rector beyond what I found in a book or two he lent me. I cannot recall any definite teaching beyond moral platitudes in any sermon I heard him preach; but I supposed that was an exceptional state of things, for later in another parish I did

learn definite and solid facts about the Church and her doctrines.

There is a tremendous leakage from the Church which holds us back from making the progress the baptisms and confirmations entitle us to expect. Some indeed have lapsed because they did not want any sort of religion, but the most of the strayed members of the flock have been lost because they did not know there was any difference between the Church and a sect. With no conception of the historical position of the Church among other religious bodies, and no grasp of the sacramental system, they have transferred their allegiance to the nearest conventicle with no sense of loss or disloyalty; and the reason thereof is not far to seek.

Family religion has gone. I mean grace at meals, family prayer and home study of the Catechism and other forms of Church doctrine. I know that in many Church families, all communicants, religion and God are never mentioned. "Going to church" is about as near as any one gets to religion.

The Sunday School is a failure. Few of our Churchpeople send their children regularly. Good Sunday School teachers are rare. The time is too short to make any real impression. Behaviour is as great a problem there as in the public school. Systems of instruction, even those set forth by authority, often but touch the edge of the verities of the faith. Some seem to be intentionally vague, so that even a clever and attentive child can gain but a very hazy idea as to what really is the faith of the Church. There is much activity just now, and "Schools of Religion" the latest form of the Sunday School; but as such the Sunday School has failed to instruct our youth, and train them into Church-goers and communicants.

There is left but confirmation instructions and sermons to make up the deficit. Personally I am confident that they are the only dependable means now at hand for the

training up of our children, and the confirmation in the Faith of our adult laity.

Newly come into a parish, I had occasion to have a very serious interview with a boy of fifteen on moral subjects. The matter seemed to turn on his ideas as to preparation for communion, and the purpose and benefits of the Sacraments. I asked him what he had learned about these matters in his confirmation instructions. He thought he had not been taught anything at all on these points. There had been but four lectures, and they had been on Church history. My own instruction consisted of one question, Did I know the Catechism? and one direction, I was to come on a certain Sunday night.

But the confirmation classes are the great opportunity of the parish priest. In Church Schools and other institutions the whole matter of instruction is often hopeless, but the parish priest has the matter in his own hands. I believe they should extend over some months, and much of the work be individual. In the case of adults, I believe in going to the homes, and especially in the case of men this works out very well. The old-fashioned lectures in the church are a poor sort of thing. What is needed is the conversation between the catechumen and his pastor. But no child, and much less an adult, should be admitted to communion before the whole matter of faith and repentance has been well gone over, and explained in terms suited to the age and intelligence of each. It is a matter of vast importance and means all the difference between a good and a poor Churchman.

This entails a great deal of hard work, but the laity are worth it, and in the end it pays. Every parish priest knows the value of the devoted and faithful parishioner. One or two such often save the situation. That there are not more is the fault of the clergy. Ignorance lies most often at the bottom of indifference. But the main dependence of the priest for the confirmation and maintenance of