Mindful also of the words of our Lord: “The poor have the Gospel preached to them,”(45) the Church has a tender compassion for the victims of poverty, which has its train of peculiar temptations and infirmities. Hence, the poor and the sinners cling to the Church, as they clung to our Lord during His mortal life. We know, on the other hand, that sinners who are guilty of gross crimes which shock public decency are virtually excommunicated from Protestant Communions. And as for the poor, the public press often complains that little or no provision is made for them in Protestant Churches. A gentleman informed me that he never saw a poor person enter an Episcopal Church which was contiguous to his residence. These excluded sinners and victims of penury either abandon Christianity altogether, or find refuge in the bosom of their true Mother, the Catholic Church, who, like her Divine Spouse, claims the afflicted as her most cherished inheritance. The parables descriptive of this Church which our Lord employed also clearly teach us that the good and bad shall be joined together in the Church as long as her earthly mission lasts. The kingdom of God is like a field in which the cockle is allowed to grow up with the good seed until the harvest-time;(46) it is like a net which encloses good fish and bad until the hour of separation comes.(47) So, too, the Church is that great house(48) in which there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay. The Fathers repeat the teaching of Scripture. St. Jerome says: “The ark of Noah was a type of the Church. As every kind of animal was in that, so in this there are men of every race and character. As in that were the leopard and the kids, the wolf and the lambs, so in this there are to be found the just and the sinful—that is, vessels of gold and silver along with those of wood and clay.”(49) St. Gregory the Great writes: “Because in it (the Church) the good are mingled with the bad, the reprobate with the elect, it is rightly declared to be similar to the wise and the foolish virgins.”(50) Listen to St. Augustine: “Let the mind recall the threshing-floor containing straw and wheat; the nets in which are inclosed good and bad fish; the ark of Noah in which were clean and unclean animals, and you will see that the Church from now until the judgment day _contains not only sheep and oxen_—that is, saintly laymen and holy ministers—_but also the beasts of the field_.... For the beasts of the field are men who take delight in carnal pleasures, _the field being that broad way which leads to perdition_.”(51)