Now, if all these offences were simply infractions of the municipal law, we would naturally look to our legislatures, our courts, juries, and sheriffs for their prevention or punishment, but they are not only that, but breaches of the divine law, and we must depend likewise on the efficacy of moral suasion to prevent if not to correct them. Public opinion can do much to repress crime, the legislative, administrative, and judicial branches of our various local governments, each in its sphere, might effect far more good; but it is on the teachings of true Christianity alone, and all the consequences that flow from it, that we must rely if we wish to stem the tide of misery, vice, and outrage which are fast surging over every portion of our fair land. The strong arm of the civil power is potent to punish when the crime has been committed, but weak indeed to prevent its perpetration. This higher and nobler duty is reserved for religion, and for religion alone. It is well enough to make concise and exact punitive laws, though this is not always done; and to administer them fearlessly, honestly, and intelligently, though the reverse is generally the case; still, experience has taught us that wise enactments and impartial judges have very little power to stay the promptings of bad hearts or repress the temptations ever presenting themselves to men of vicious habits or defective moral training. The church, and only the church, can rule the mind and heart of man, can train him from his infancy, before he knows or is responsible to any civil law, can strengthen him with the graces of the sacraments, arm him with the most potent of all weapons against sin--prayer--place constantly before his eyes the certainty of everlasting bliss or eternal damnation, keep him in the "narrow path," and thus prevent the possibility of his being an enemy to society and an outcast of heaven.