He must have felt the extraordinary change in his state of mind and duty now to what he experienced some four or five years before. There are no doubts about doctrines, nor difficulties about Dissenters; his way is plain and clear, without mist or equivocal clause; there is but one way for Catholics of being united with heretics--their unconditional submission to the Church. There is no going half-way to meet them, or sacrificing of principles to soothe their scruples; either all or none--the last definition of the Council of Trent, as well as the first article of the Apostles' Creed. If he has difficulties about any matter, he will not find Bishops giving him shifting answers, and seemingly ignorant themselves of what is the received interpretation of a point of faith. He will be told at once by the next priest what is the doctrine of the Church, and if he refuses to assent to it he ceases to be a Catholic. This looks an iron rule in the Church of God, and those outside her cannot understand how its very unbending firmness consoles the doubtful, cheers the desponding, strengthens the will and expands and nourishes the intellect. A priest has many consolations in his little country parish that few can understand or appreciate. It is not the number and efficiency of his schools, the round of his visits, or the frequency of his instructions. No; it is the offering of the Victim of Salvation every morning for his own and his people's sins, and it is the conveying the precious blood of his Saviour to their souls, through the Sacraments he administers. Only a priest can understand what it is to feel that a creature kneels before him, steeped in vice and sin, and, after a good confession, rises from his knees, restored to God's grace and friendship. All his labours have this one object--the putting of his people into the grace of God, and keeping them in it until they reach to their reward. There is a reality in all this which faith alone can give that makes {225} him taste and feel the good he is doing. A reality that will make him fly without hesitation to the pestilential deathbed, and glory in inhaling a poison that may end his own days, in the discharge of his duty. He must be ever ready to give his life for his sheep, not in fancy or in words, but in very deed, and thus seal by his martyrdom both the truth which he professes, and his love for the Master whom he has been chosen to serve. The number of priests who die every year, and the average of a missionary priest's life, prove but too clearly how often the sacrifice is accepted. {226} CHAPTER V. Prospects Of Widening His Sphere Of Action.