"Let me plead for the habit of using the church as our pious lay folk do. The church is not merely the priest's workshop, where he gives the sacraments and preaches to others. It is his own home, his sanctuary, and he is the appointed guardian of this dwelling-place of God with men. Here at least his surroundings will help his prayer, not mar it, and the sacramental presence of his God will tend to warm his heart and to lift his first thoughts above the teasing distractions of his daily life." The alternative of trying to make our Meditation in our room is to surround ourselves with difficulties and distractions of every kind, connected with our daily work. If it be argued that the Jesuits themselves always make their exercises in their rooms, the answer is simply that this is part of a complete and thoroughly worked out system of life, and it is no disrespect to them to say that to adopt one detail when we do not aim at adopting the whole will not lead to a good result. A minor reason for urging the use of the church is that it gives great edification to the lay folk coming to mass to find the priest always there first at his prayers, while it puzzles them to find the church empty till the very hour for mass. And if it be urged that the early comers will invade the priest's time and seeing him there, will utilise the spare minutes to go to Confession or the like, the answer is that only the most inconsiderate of his parishioners would think of troubling him at such a time unless there is good reason--that they live at a distance or cannot come at another time; and in the few instances in which it may occur, the charity of his sacrifice will make up for the interruption of his exercise. We may also plead the high authority of St. Alphonsus, [7] that the church is the best place for meditation, and although he goes on to say that those who cannot go to the church may "give themselves to prayer in any place, at home, in the country, even when walking, even when at their work," he is not speaking primarily of priests, who nearly always have the opportunity of using the church if they want to; nevertheless he describes a practice which may often be useful to a hard-worked priest, whether his morning meditation has been omitted or not.