ing institutions of its kind in the city of Rochester. I do not know the exact sum which it has paid out in benefits during this forty-two years of its existence, but I am quite sure that it is somewhere between seventy and one hundred thousand dollars, and I know that it has to date between eight and nine thousand dollars in its treasury. St. Andrew's Brotherhood did not confine its beneficial work to its membership; it constantly contributed to the needs of the community; to any object that commended itself to its approval. It is to-day a great power for good in the city of Rochester. Although it was the child of what was once known as a ritualistic church, it has no ornate ritual of its own; its initiation ceremonies are very simple. The rector of St. Andrew's Church is, ex officio, chaplain of the Brotherhood, but he exercises no other authority. The Brotherhood rules itself, elects its own officers, administers its own affairs. It has been indebted through all these years to St. Andrew's parish for its meeting hall, and it in turn has made St. Andrew's parish known in every corner of the city of Rochester.

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CHAPTER XXVII

RETREATS AND QUIET DAYS

s I was then a member of the Catholic school in the Church, I was invited by the Mother Superior

of the Sisters of St. Mary to conduct a retreat for the associates of the Order in the Convent of the Sisterhood at Peekskill, New York. I accepted this invitation as a call to a new and higher order of work. A recent sickness seemed to me a preparation for this sacred duty.

The retreat has always been a discipline of the Catholic Church. Before young men are admitted into holy orders they are called into retreat, that by the practice of silence, meditation and confession they may search their hearts and see whether or not they are ready to give themselves to the service of God and man in the Church. The priesthood is not a profession; it is a calling. A man enters it, not to gain a livelihood, but as a way of service. He is to minister to the people of the things of God. This should be the underlying principle of all callings; the lawyer should minister to the people of the things of justice; the physician of the things of health; the merchant of the goods of life; but only in the priesthood is the ministry recognized as the primary motive. The clergyman is a minister. The retreat follows immediately upon the graduation from the seminary that by self-examination the neophyte may know his own soul; by confession may discover his sins, and by absolution may be loosed from his bonds. Not only does the priest enjoy this discipline at the time of his ordination, but he makes use of the retreat

throughout his priesthood for the refreshment and recreation of his soul.

The retreat is the privilege of the women as well as the men, of the laity as well as of the priesthood. Everyone needs from time to time to withdraw from the world; to enter into the silence and take account of stock, and this is especially the need of our modern life, with its worry and hurry, rushing us through life without giving us leisure to know what life is. The revival of this practice in the Episcopal Church was one of the blessings of the Catholic movement in that Church.

When one enters into retreat he enters as far as possible into the seclusion of his own soul. Silence is the law of the retreat. Silence as one lies down and as one rises up; silence at table and silence in the house. The only voice the retreatant hears is the voice of the conductor, and the voice of the conductor is to the retreatant the voice of God.

The value of a retreat lies with the conductor; if he has within him the sevenfold Spirit of God, the spirit of wisdom, and knowledge and ghostly strength, then his spirit will rule the retreat to the profit of those who are in retreat. The conductor exercises his functions by means of the eucharist, the instruction, the mediation and the address, all of which are given in public to the whole body of the retreatants. It is also his duty to meet each retreatant in private for confession, consultation, absolution and advice.

In the celebration of the eucharist, the conductor exercises the purely priestly function; he is mediating between God and man, praying to the Lord God to forgive the sins of His people and to admit them into His holy presence. The power of prayer can never be destroyed; it inheres in the universe. "Ask and ye shall receive"; a man who does not pray is a man who does not live in any true sense of

the term. Prayer is the breath of the soul. We breathe in the necessities of the spiritual life, and out of the spiritual life proceed all the issues of life and death, so that in offering the oblation upon the altar, the minister is seeking to clear the way for the union of the individual soul with the oversoul.

In his instruction the conductor of the retreat is exercising the intelligence both of himself and his hearers; he is thinking and he is compelling them to think. The value of his instruction depends upon the contents of his thought; if he has no thought, he cannot make others think; if he merely repeats what he has heard, if his intelligence adds nothing to the common intelligence, then he fails in the office of conductor. As the Lord says, "The Scribe instructed in the Kingdom of God brings forth things new and old." Every speaker should stir up antagonism in the minds of his hearers; it is by conflict that growth comes. He who seeks simply to please will in the end displease; the hearer will come away weary instead of strengthened.

The art of meditation is of difficult practice; it is an exercise pure and simple of the soul. When the conductor sits in his chair, he is in a passive state; he is ready to yield himself to the influences of the spirit. All he takes with him is a vague notion of the truth that he wants to see and make others see; then he keeps his will in abeyance; he does not strive for any effect; he does not search for any thought; he leaves his soul free to receive and to impart; he does not know, for the most part, what he is saying as he says it; his words come from a higher source than that of his own mind; it is the Great Spirit that is moving his spirit as the winds move the surface of the sea. The art of meditation comes with exercise, but the genius for it must be inborn; no man can meditate in public who is not constantly meditating in private; unless the soul is per

petually steeped in the oversoul, it cannot give forth the inspiration of the oversoul.

In his address, the speaker is hortatory; he is using his will primarily to compel his hearers to accept and to apply the truths which have been imparted to them in the instruction and the inspirations which have come to them in the meditation. Now, to exercise this office of a conductor, one must be an all-round spiritual athlete; he must be able to run, to stop, to hold and to run again. If we are to have a true ministry to the spirit, we must make provision for the training of men for that purpose. The great Catholic Church does this, and that is one of the secrets of its continuing power, but if the Catholic Church is to retain the spiritual leadership or to regain it, it must adjust its teaching to the eternal truth; it must accept without equivocation the modern conception of the universe. As for the Protestant clergy, it is for them to get rid entirely of their theologies which are outworn and make themselves familiar with that which is nearest, namely, their own souls, if they have any.

When such a conductor of a

But the value of the retreat lies in the ministration of the conductor to the personal soul. Each soul is a persona, not a mere individual, but a persona, an actor, having its own part to play in the comedy of human life. It is this fact that finds expression in Dante's "Divine Comedy” and the human comedy of Balzac. comedian comes into the presence of the retreat, it is to confess its errors and failures, not that it may be free to err and fail again, but that it may be instructed and cleansed and go out of that closet to play more nobly its part on the stage of life. Confession and absolution do not free a penitent from the penalty of sin. No power in the universe can avoid that penalty. The best that confession and absolution can do is to break the