You serve an exacting Master. You are placed in a position which is beset with responsibility and danger. It is a responsible position, because of the great and important duties and obligations which are annexed to it; dangerous, because of its great difficulties and temptations. Those who are favored and elevated above their fellows by Divine Providence, have not received these blessings in order that they may make a display of themselves or indulge their passions, but in order that they may glorify God and do good to their fellow-men. {138} If they wish to be safe in the midst of the allurements and seductions of this world, to derive real and lasting advantage from their wealth, and to save their souls, they must consecrate their riches to the service of God. There is but one end for which one can live in this world which is worthy of a Christian--the exaltation of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Princes, nobles, men of power and influence through their talents, learning, station, or wealth, if they do not devote themselves heart and soul to the advancement and extension of the Catholic Faith and the Catholic Church, are recreant to their trust. It is this treason of the great and rich in Catholic nations to the sacred cause of Christ and His Church which is the chief cause of irreligion and vice among the people, of rebellion and revolution, political and social disorder, and which threatens to produce convulsions still more extensive and terrible, in which the privileged classes will become the victims of a conflagration which their own folly and wickedness have kindled. The throne of the Roman Pontiff is the keystone of the arch of political and social order, public peace and prosperity, civilization and good government. Those who have the greatest stake involved in the social commonwealth have the greatest interest in maintaining the rights of that august and sacred throne. {139} It is a disgrace to Christendom that the Sovereign Pontiff of the Catholic Church should be left to struggle almost alone and single-handed with enemies who have plotted the overthrow of the Holy See and of religion. It is shameful that he should be left to bear the burden of debts and embarrassments which have been created by those who have unjustly invaded and despoiled the patrimony of the Church. The majestic figure and attitude of Pius IX. is a condemnation of the nations of Christendom in this nineteenth century before the tribunal of conscience and of Almighty God. Only those can free themselves from this condemnation who are found on his side, sustaining his cause by word and deed, proving their loyalty to Christ and His Vicar by their open renunciation of all sympathy and complicity with the enemies of the Holy See, and by their zealous and active support of the spiritual supremacy and temporal princedom of the Roman Pontiff.