Father Ignatius had an idea in his mind for a number of years, and saw no practical way in which it might be realized. He looked forward, with a pleasing anticipation, to the prospect of going about from parish to parish on a kind of itinerary mission. The thing was unusual in our day, and he saw no plea by which it could be justified to others, or he should have gone on it long before. He proposed it at last to his Superiors, and the circumstances of his position wonderfully favoured its prosecution. Voluntary poverty was raised to a virtue by the example and teaching of our Divine Lord, and poverty must always have a counterpart. To be poor is to be dependent, and want is ordained for the sanctification of plenty. When our Divine Master said that it was difficult for the rich man to be saved, He subjoined that with God all things are possible. The miseries of the poor are the channels through which riches can flow into Heaven, and make friends to their possessors of the mammon of iniquity. In the dispensation of Providence, the Church watches over the interests of all her children, and whilst she proclaims the severity of the Gospel maxims, she provides for their observance. She must preach poverty of spirit, from the text of the sermon on the Mount, and she manages to make kings who are richer than David live after God's own heart. The beautiful harmony between rank and lowliness, authority and submission, prosperity and adversity, has long ago been arranged by the practice of the ages of faith, and by the Pontifical constitutions which impress the seal of the Fisherman upon the usages of Catholicity. {369} In no department of Catholic polity is this superior wisdom so well exemplified as in the rules of mendicant orders. The Church takes the noble from his seat of power, she makes him cast his coronet at the feet of Peter, and stretch out his hand to his former vassal for the paltry morsel that is to sustain his future existence. She forbids him to accumulate; she makes him give back a thousand-fold what he receives. By thus bringing down the pride of power and making it pay court to the discontented child of penury, she reconciles man with Providence and suffuses reverence through the crowd, who might grumble at greatness, by making their lord according to the world their servant according to the Gospel.