and culminating act was to be that of sacrifice; and He made the entire race centre about the splendid temple which was built over the altar on which the sacrificial fires were ever to burn. Years after, when the great Daniel looked out from his Babylonian captivity and saw the desolation of the sanctuary in its overturned and smokeless altars, he uttered the words: "it is the end;" that is to say: relig ion has ceased among the people of God; for the sacrifices have been abolished.

Sacrifices indeed are not essential for religious worship, but they are essential for the perfection of it; for nothing can so well express the sentiment of submission to God; nothing can give such emphasis to gratitude, nothing is so potent for intercession; nothing avails so much for atonement. It is in the very nature of things. Men have always thought, and still think there is no stronger or better way of enforcing their words than by relinquishing the best they have as a proof of sincerity. Moreover, to sacrifice to any one else than God, would be impiety and idolatry.

The absence of this kind of worship explains the emptiness of the Protestant service. There is no altar; there is no priesthood; there is no sacrifice. The attempts of Ritualists are ineffectual to restore either, and the words of Daniel are applicable to their worship as to that of rejected Judaism.

For sixteen hundred years the central and culminating act of Christian worship was the sacrifice of the Mass. All the heresies which divided nations or races from the Mother Church clung to that form of adoration, no matter how widely they departed from her in points of doctrine. Protestantism alone proclaimed that a service of song and prayer was enough. They overthrew the altars; they abolished the priesthood, and consequently ceased to worship the Almighty with anything like the perfectness of the old Patriarchs and cannot at all compare with the people of the Old Testament whose sacrifices were incessant.

It is true that the sacrifice of Calvary put an end to all blood-offerings, both of the chosen people and the Gentiles. It is true that the Blood of Jesus Christ paid the debt of our transgressions; that it was a perfect and an infinite act of adoration; that it petitions for us and voices our gratitude as nothing else can. But we must remember that the infinite oblation on Calvary was the act of a brief moment and took place only in the presence of the few who stood near the cross. In the perfect religion which Christ died to establish this

sacrifice must be continual, otherwise it would lack something which the sacrifices of the Old Law possessed, and the Church would have failed to fulfil Christ's dying injunction: "do this, which in its Scriptural acceptation means: "offer this sacrifice." As the sacrifices of the Old Law were typical and representative of what was to occur on Calvary, so there should be, if the New Law was to be perfect, a continual representation of what had occurred; not a representation such as a picture or a ceremony would afford, but a reproduction of what had taken place. The apparent impossibility of doing so has been overcome by the manner of Christ's existence under the sacramental species which the wisdom and the power of God have conceived and accomplished.

Christ indeed has merited our salvation, but He has left to His ministers the application of those merits to the souls of men; and the new sacrifice which Malachy saw would be offered among the Gentiles from the rising to the setting of the sun, is realized only by the continual oblations of the Mass which encircle the world with the progress of the sun, drawing up from the infinite ocean of Christ's merits the showers of grace which they pour down upon the world, or send in rivers through the lands which, but for them, would perish. Such has been the teaching of the Church from the beginning. It is the only explanation of the magnificence with which she invests this great central act of her worship; of the sacredness with which she surrounds her altars; and of the inspired sublimity of the temples in the midst of which these altars stand.

What splendid conceptions of religion all this furnishes for the people; what limitless matter of instruction it places at the disposal of the pulpit! Numberless treatises, of course, have been written on this theme in every tongue and at every period of the world, and matter has never been wanting. The learned work of Dr. Gihr (1) on the subject, from which most of these thoughts have been taken, is one more valuable contribution to this precious literature.

(1)"The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass." (Herder, St. Louis.)

EDITORIAL.

A QUESTION FOR THE LAITY.

WHAT will chiefly impress the reader of our chronicle this month, is the number and extent of the Catholic congresses which have been held in Europe, the enthusiasm with which they were attended, and the prominent part which laymen have invariably taken in their proceedings. At Mannheim, Fribourg, Namur, Compostella, it is the same story, business and labor suspended, the towns in holiday attire, multitudes of people to witness the ceremonies and hear the addresses, and the presence, voice and action of Catholic laymen from every walk in life, in evidence, if not predominant, throughout. When all is said about the favorable conditions of our Church in the United States, one question still needs an answer, and it is, how comes it that in a democracy, which is supposed to bring out what is best in the individual citizen, we, as Catholics, appear, at least, to have such little public spirit, and to assert but faintly, if at all, the belief we profess? Why is it that in countries, which some of us are but too ready to look upon as inferior in many respects to our own, Catholic men are not only capable of expressing their views in a manner and style' to excite the admiration of their clerical hearers, but fearless and energetic enough to compel the attention and respect of men whose tradition and interest it is to antagonize them in every way? We have, or at least pretend to have, political advantages far superior to theirs. Have we really such superior advantages over Germany, for instance, or Belgium, or, for that matter, over Spain, or Switzerland? If we have, it only adds to the difficulty of accounting for our failure as individuals as well as a body to impress the stamp of our religious faith, and the strength it should impart to our mental and moral character, on the sentiments of our fellow citizens, on the institutions which we, as well as they, originate and maintain, and on the action which quickens our national life? Are we inferior in education to our brethren in the Old World; or, if equal to them, are we, as compared with them, far inferior to those about us? Considering the excellence of Catholic education generally in Europe-even in France this is the chief objection of the present government against it-considering also the disadvantages under which we have had hitherto to labor, we may easily admit some inferiority to Catholics abroad without any discredit to ourselves, and without admitting, in spite of certain obvious advantages of theirs, any real superiority on the part of our non-Catholic

For years the most

fellow-citizens. In the last analysis it is not political or educational or any other disadvantage, which must account for this strange reverse in the order of things, by which with all our liberty, or, at least, with comparative freedom from untrammeled conditions, which so many regard as liberty, we still lack the public spirit of Catholics in countries which are not democratic like our own. It is idle to say that we have been used to having our priests act for us. If this be true it is not the fault of the priests, but our own. worthy priests of this land, not merely the men to the manor born, but others quite as patriotic, and often much broader in mind and heart, all, in fact, who have been best acquainted with the needs of its people, have been exhorting and organizing the laity, men and women, young and old, and urging them to take a more active part in the life of the nation, in its political, social, intellectual life, in its reforms, enterprises, charities, civil and social functions, literature, art, music, in a word, in all that helps to make the model citizen and extends his influence to the widest circle. In proof of this we need only mention the splendid and effective organization of the laity in our German Catholic societies and in the various national and racial bodies which have been formed and, in great measure, sustained by the co-operation of our priests. Sooner or later the ecclesiastic, prelate or priest, who would attempt to suppress the legitimate aspiration, social or civil, of any Catholic organization, or who, unauthorized, would seek to constitute himself the exclusive formulator of Catholic sentiment, would necessarily lose all influence and impair his efficiency. It is not the spirit of our prelates or priests. Just as in the congresses reported in the chronicle, the bishops and clergy were the most generous in support of the laity, so likewise the members of our own hierarchy, and our priests as a rule have urged the laity to cultivate a public spirit, and none more than they have rejoiced at every slightest manifestation of it.

FEDERATION AND PUBLIC SPIRIT.

If Catholic laymen in the United States have done but little hitherto towards influencing public opinion and impressing the stamp of their faith on the social life of the nation, it is not, therefore, because of their political or educational disadvantages as compared with their fellow-Catholics in the Old World; nor is it because of any unsought or unwarranted clerical interference. On the contrary, what little influence they have exercised thus far is due, for the most part, to the encouragement received from the prelates and priests of the country, who have always been ready to approve and promote every genuine

movement among the laity as soon as it reached the stage which justified their action in its favor. Witness the zeal with which two of our bishops, the Right Reverend James A. McFaul and Sebastian G. Messmer, have labored to advance and consolidate the movement for the federation of Catholic societies, which is essentially a layman's movement. Witness, also, the readiness and heartiness with which nearly one-half the members of our hierarchy and hundreds of our prominent clergymen have bidden the movement God-speed, for the simple reason that they recognize in it the very best means of developing in the Catholic laity an active Catholic spirit, a union for the employment of the most effective Catholic agencies in all that can further the moral, social and civil status not of Catholics only, but of every citizen in the land. Our greatest drawback in times past has been that besides being comparatively few in number, we have been scattered up and down the land, isolated practically from one another as well as from those who are not of our faith. To speak out was like crying in the wilderness, and Catholic societies were, like individual Catholics, units apart. It was all very plausible to bid them take part in movements in common with all our fellow-citizens, irrespective of creed, when, for want of union among themselves, they could not compel a recognition of their rights. It was all very well to say that what was needed to influence or form public opinion was a leading Catholic weekly or daily newspaper. A great newspaper may influence, but not create nor develop, public opinion; it merely helps to form an opinion which is already in process of formation, and to confirm the same by giving it popular and permanent expression. The real editor has to study what is in the mind of his readers much more than they have to study what he writes in his editorial. He has to divine what they are thinking; they have only to recognize in his expression the thoughts they had formed but not expressed. Living apart, often apparently with conflicting interests, with no ready means of communication, a common Catholic sentiment was impossible, and without this a Catholic newspaper, weekly or daily, would have no reason for existence. United, and kept in contact by actual and frequent communication, it will very soon require several newspapers to give expression to the public Catholic sentiment that will thus be developed; and if we may judge by the excellent work our Catholic weeklies have been doing recently, they will be quite equal to the demand. This union federation has effected in a manner, which may seem but natural to us now, but which the future chronicler of this remarkable year in the history of the Church in the United States will record as nothing short of marvellous. Very justly may the President of the Federation write, as he does in the opening article of this num