The objection may be raised, not without reason, that the kind of man who can satisfy such exacting requirements is very unusual. Men of strong and commanding personality do not grow on gooseberry bushes, and if Church work to be more successful requires that type, why, so much the worse for Church work. Yet, granted that the highest results may be obtained thus, there still remains a large field for the average man. All the world recognizes brilliance and force of character, but no less surely it recognizes the fact of simple goodness. Many a man of average scholarship and average ability, who perhaps deems himself not good enough for the priesthood, could do splendid work for Christ if only he possesses that all-important virtue.

One great reason why young men are not volunteering in sufficient numbers today is to be found in the fact that the call is not sounded in their ears with sufficient vigour and clearness. This does not mean that there are not enough sermons preached on the vocation of the ministry, though if there were more such it might play no small part in bettering affairs. What is meant is that as society is now organized there are other occupations dangling their tempting offers of money and power and worldly position before men's eyes. Science, law, medicine-all these offer big prizes to an ambitious man, and in the fierce competition among the professions the Church's call to service is easily outshouted. The world has not much use for the still small voice in this age of newspaper and magazine advertising; it treats it with scant respect, but if properly used that same voice may become a more potent and penetrating influence than all the brass band methods now so much in vogue.

The call must be sounded in two ways to be effective. No man should become a candidate for Holy Orders unless he is firmly convinced that God is calling him; without the inward call entering the ministry is worse than useless. But a quiet, aggressive campaign of information could do much towards opening the ears of likely men to the call.

In the first place it is necessary to explode some of the popular fallacies that still surround the idea of the priesthood. One of the chief of these is that it has not enough really hard work in it to occupy an active man's full time. "Easy money," and "Not a real man's job," are some of the unthinking criticisms passed by those

who only see the surface of things. Many who never see the priest except when he is in the pulpit for twenty minutes on a Sunday morning carelessly, but naturally, assume that that is the week's tale of bricks. They adopt the same attitude as the Scotch elder who found his minister accidentally fallen into a pit. "Ah weel, mon, dinna worry. This is only Wednesday afternoon and ye'll no be wantit till the Sawbath." Those who have had the privilege of working with the Church's clergy arrive at a juster estimate of their work. "That is the hardest working man in K-," remarked a Methodist once to the writer, referring to a curate in an Ontario city; "he's out of his house and at work every day before eight o'clock." The mask of the pulpit and the Sunday service must be drawn aside to a certain extent, so that the average layman can realize that preaching and Sunday work form, after all, only a part of the priest's work. One who sees something of the continual battle against sin in all its forms waged by the conscientious priest can well understand why so many men break down at a comparatively early age.

Whence then does this misapprehension come? Doubtless it lies in this, that whereas the ordinary business man is ruled by an external time-table the priest largely makes his own. He is not confined to an office all day, or continually watched by a foreman to prevent slacking; he does not slave over a bank ledger or dole out merchandise over a counter. Because his office is a whole parish, and because his foreman is his own conscientiousness the unthinking are liable to assume that neither office nor foreman exist. Moreover, the example set by that rara avis, a lazy priest, can do incalculable harm; and as long as a priest has so much in his hands the disposal of his time there will be peculiar force in the temptation to laziness.

But these fallacies are not invincible; like bubbles of every sort they collapse at the first touch of the pin-point of truth, and the truth today is beginning to make headway against the mass of popular prejudice and misunderstanding that still exists. The most potent agency for recruiting the ministry today, and for getting rid of the pernicious misapprehensions about priestly work, is a skilfully presented, forcible, direct exposition of what that work really is. This presentation is solely a work for the clergy themselves, one that laymen should not attempt to handle. No dentist

would dream of laying down the law about naval strategy to an expert, and no lawyer would lecture on anatomy to a medical congress. Here particularly should the rule apply of the cobbler sticking to his last.

Yet a word as to how the call should be presented may not be amiss, though advice that is offered for nothing is often worth no more. One would think that preaching on the work of the ministry would be a most delicate task; unless it were carefully handled it might sound horribly like "touting," and nobody likes touting. Yet it is not to be flinched from because of its awkwardness, and it may be that God will use this means of enlarging our lay vision and raising our ideals of the priestly life more in the future. More effective work could possibly be done in the ordinary round of parochial life by the word spoken in season and that most effective of all agents, the unobtrusive but ever present example. That, after all, is what will open the ears of our young men to hear the voice of God.

But if the direct explanation of priestly life and priestly work is essentially a task for priests, let us not go away with the idea that the work is completed. The laity have their share to do, and an important share at that. A story is told of a certain layman notorious for his strictures on the clergy who was once harping on his favourite theme to a bishop. The clergy were not gentlemen, poor scholars, not men of the world, not spiritually minded, and so on ad nauseam. The bishop listened patiently for awhile, but at last the worm turned.

"My dear sir, don't be too hard on us. Remember we have only the laity to draw from."

The anecdote strikes home. After all, the tasks of finding recruits for the ministry is a layman's task, inasmuch as the clergy are ultimately ordained and consecrated laymen. It might almost be stated as if it were a mathematical problem; the supply of ordinands is in a direct ratio to the idealism of the laity. Where ideals and spirituality are swamped by materialism, there the supply falls off. That is what lies at the root of the whole problem; modern society is steeped in materialism. We think money, we talk money; we acclaim the moneyed man as a success and regard the poor as failures. The influence of thousands of homes and many schools, though unconsciously, perhaps, is on the side of the exalta

tion of money and its power. Children, when being urged to train themselves for success, nearly always have it interpreted to them in terms of money. Parents do not often, it is true, attack the idea of the priesthood as a profession for their children; it is much simpler never to mention it as a possibility. "It is a worthy calling, but I would not consider it for my boys," is the mental attitude of many a father who honestly believes himself a loyal churchman. Add to such a home atmosphere the thousand and one subtle influences of the environment of society, and a frame of mind is created not always advantageous to the Church. On an observant child, trained to regard money as essential to happiness, the sight of the rector of a wealthy parish trudging his rounds on foot stamps itself deep.

One sees a tendency to belittle the priesthood on every side, not least in current literature and drama. We are too familiar with the type of play that portrays its cleric as kind-hearted and wellmeaning, "but entre nous, my dear chap, a bit of an ass!" In the present-day novel, how often we see the priest portrayed as a sanctimonious, oily self-seeker, "pi," in the phraseology of the English public school boy, while the really religious, conscientious man always resigns his Orders and takes to Socialistic journalism! Doubtless such types exist, just as a certain number of "bar-tender" doctors and "shyster" lawyers exist; even among the Apostles there was an Iscariot. But if the unprejudiced reader recalls to his mind the large number of priests he has known, he will doubtless remember the great majority as hard-working, faithful, highly respected men of God, not superhumanly perfect, but as a body averaging remarkably high.

It is not hard to see the conditions underlying the present shortage of ordination candidates; it is a far harder task to try and prescribe a remedy. Yet not to make the attempt, however inadequate its results may seem, is to fail in a duty incumbent upon every loyal Churchman. We have, in the first place, to begin with ourselves by tearing down the shrine of the great god Business in our hearts and on the ruins planting the Cross of the Crucified. Not all of us are called to the ministry; true, many might hear the call if only they unstopped their ears a while and listened, but the fact must be recognized that the call is for comparatively few. Yet

the question of clerical supply is one in which all have a vital interest.

Perhaps the first essential is to create an atmosphere favorable to hearing the call. Experts in advertising are fully aware of the importance of this step. In selling goods one has to ensure a favorable hearing for the salesman. The atmosphere can be formed in many ways; discussion of the problem in the press and periodicals helps; dedication of their children to the priesthood by parents can help even more. Samuel was not allowed to grow up in ignorance of religion and then to "choose for himself;" he was dedicated from his earliest years, and his mother's influence was unhesitatingly thrown into the balance. Another, and from a lay point of view a vital step is to better the financial status of the ministry, to make it a more attractive calling. Of course such a suggestion at once calls down a storm of criticism to the effect that the clergy should be willing to sacrifice themselves: the old cheap sneer of "the loaves and the fishes" is sure to be heard. Fears that a poorer quality of ordinands would offer themselves are sure to be expressed. Yet, granting the truth of the criticism and fears, the fact remains. Young men in large numbers will not enter the priesthood so long as less than a living wage, with a home for the aged at the end of it, is a certainty. It is perfectly true that the clergy should be self-sacrificing. By force of circumstances they are. But sauce for the clerical goose is equally sauce for the lay gander; the self-sacrifice of the pew should parallel that of the pulpit. If men are really in earnest about the value of the Church and her ministrations they will be willing to sacrifice a good deal to ensure that those ministrations are maintained. What one cannot help feeling at the present time is that the catchword of selfsacrifice for the clergy is only too often used as a pretext for saving the pockets of the laity. In an age when so much is being talked about equality let us have equality of sacrifice as well.

All this brings us back to our former point-that the first and last enemy to be destroyed is Materialism, the death of the soul, for unless he is engaged at close quarters a larger supply of priests for the Church will remain a pious aspiration. Materialism of mind and soul is the underlying cause of the present unsatisfactory financial status of the clergy and the chief deterrent to improvement. Once that is firmly realized, once its overthrow is begun