confessors were on duty, and others were appointed to instruct converts or ignorant adult Catholics. All who wished to go to confession were easily heard, without long waiting, or the accumulation of a great crowd of wearied and eager penitents pressing around the confessionals. It was the same in St. John's, where the Archbishop of Halifax and a large body of clergymen were hearing confessions constantly, although, even with this powerful aid, the missionaries broke down under the labor of preaching every day to six thousand or eight thousand persons in the great Cathedral Church, which had just been opened for service. In these places, however, the number of the people, though great, had a limit which could be reached, and the requisite number of priests were easily at the command of the bishop. In the United States, however, the work is out of all proportion to the number of priests who are either specially devoted to missions or who can be called in to aid these in their labors. The missionaries are too few to do the work alone, and the parochial clergy are too much engaged in their own duties to be able to give much of their time to additional works of charity. If it were possible to give missions simultaneously in all the churches of New York City, and if they could contain all the people, it would be easy to collect one hundred thousand Catholics together every night to hear the Word of God, and to bring from one hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand to communion within fifteen days. In proportion to the population, the same results would be produced everywhere in the United States. It would require the labor of one hundred missionaries, during eight years, to give missions thoroughly to our entire Catholic population. At their commencement, however, and for some years after, there were but six or eight, and there are now, probably, not more than twenty priests continually employed in this work. {127} The necessity for it is, nevertheless, quite as urgent as it ever has been, and the benefit to be derived from it inconceivable. There are the vast masses of people gathered in our great centers of population, exposed to a thousand demoralizing influences, and most inadequately supplied with the ordinary means of grace. All that has been done for them hitherto, is but just sufficient to develop the immense need there is for doing more, and the great blessing that attends every effort to do it. Of course, the main reliance of the Church is, and always must be, upon the bishops and parochial clergy, and I have not had the slightest intention, in any thing I have said, to exaggerate the importance of the special work of missionaries. The episcopate and priesthood were established by Jesus Christ Himself, and are absolutely essential to the very existence of the Church. Religious congregations are of ecclesiastical institution, and are only auxiliary to the pastoral office. The multiplication of churches and of priests