gave their energies to develop its material progress, and gave their lives for its security and permanency.

For all this, which they are ready to do all over again tomorrow, they demand equal rights guaranteed by the law and Constitution of the State and country.

And a little noisy group of self-constituted guardians of liberty rise up like the tailors of Tooley Street and say "No." The effrontery and insolence would be inconceivable were it not a fact.

Not only do they dare to attempt to make the Constitution a scrap of paper, but they flood the country with infamous, vulgar, and dirty literature full of indecency and calumny. They, of course, are not fools enough to believe these things, but they know that there are thousands of men and women whose whole mental outfit seems to be antagonism to everything Catholic, and they trade upon these poor ignorant dupes for their own selfish ends and purposes.

Now it is the duty not only of every Catholic, but every honest man to make the truth known, to state precisely the position of Catholics in the country, and to put to shame this miserable attempt to arouse racial and religious antagonisms. We want everyone to have his legal and constitutional rights, and we shall insist upon having ours.

That, in a word, is the purpose of federation, and every American citizen who understands what liberty means must rejoice that for the sake of public morality and righteousness, and for the safeguarding of the permanency of this nation, there is such a force and such an organization for justice and right.

CHARITY

ADDRESS BY THE MOST REV. J. J. GLENNON, D.D.

ARCHBISHOP OF ST. LOUIS, MO.

IN a theological sense charity means a great deal more than it does in popular parlance. Its definition is that it is a divine virtue impelling to the love of Almighty God and including therein the love of our neighbor. Including all other virtues and completing the law, it is in this sense that it is declared by the apostles to be the greatest. "Now there remaineth Faith and Hope and Charity; but the greatest of these is Charity." It is thus our Lord stated it in the Gospel of St. Matthew: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God"; this is the greatest and first commandment, and the second is like unto this: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." This is the charity that the Scriptures speak of and in almost their every chapter hold forth as the greatest, and of which Christ is the inspiration and embodiment, and which all those who would follow Him must practise, and the more perfect the practice the nearer we come to Him. It is to be the expression of our faith; it is to be the basis of our hope; it is to be the law of our life; and in final judgment it will be a test and a standard. "Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these, my least brethren, you did it to me." It is this charity that covers the multitude of sins, that is all embracing, that brightens the earth and fills it with light, that energizes and spiritualizes humanity. It is the divinity that shapes our ends, that crowns our years and leads to a blessed eternity, still to

remain as heaven's chiefest attribute, as our sweetest performance in eternity.

But while we must not forget the divine character of this great virtue and its infinite scope, yet the modern way is to limit it so that the divine is almost forgotten and its human side only regarded. In other words, it is interpreted into our dealings with our fellow-man, our appreciation of his needs and our help extended. It has to do, chiefly, with the relief of the poor and unfortunate, the care of the orphan and the dependent, the protection of the weak, and the reform of the erring. It has to do with what may be called the corporal works of mercy, and in the forgetfulness of its origin, motive, and inspiration, it is made to descend from the exalted position that Christ has given to it to that which men have made for it to His exclusion and to which they give that other name, " philanthropy."

I have no word of criticism, nor do I want at all to disparage the great volume of good accomplished in the name of philanthropy. I know that it has moved many men of generous impulses to the accomplishment of great things. I may not withhold admiration from these expressions of their generosity and the worthiness of the motives that prompted them; for to help man because of the love you bear him, to help humanity because you wish to see its sorrows lessened and its joys increased, is in itself not unworthy. But philanthropy, after all, is charity without a soul. It is looking at humanity as a phenomenon rather than the family of God. It is the helping of that humanity in its intellectual and material progress, forgetting or ignoring that it is of little use to provide for the wants of the body unless the same be the threshold unto the soul's liberation and elevation. "Labor not," says Christ, " for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto life everlasting."

Our charitable workers must never forget in their work that the Blessed Lord shall represent the supreme term of their service, and that while human love may be a motive unto their generosity, the higher love must not be outlawed. Hence the preface to all their endeavor may read "for humanity," but added thereto should be "in the name of God."

Charity as we know it is of a twofold character: the charity that is organized and that which is individual and private. It is true that these two forms sometimes mingle, as where one may give to an organized charity and prefer that the donor should remain unknown. Still in this case the principle of the organized charity is recognized and the organization is made the almoner of the donation that is private.

The world of to-day believes in organization, and properly constructed organization helps in the division of labor and the accomplishment of results quite unattainable by the individual. We believe in organized charity, not alone for its capacity for more effective work, but as a protection and defence of the work and the workers. But a charity organization that will merit the approval of the Church must have a soul. They who so organize may adopt business methods, but the impulse must still remain that of charity. Were it to become like other corporations, that are popularly believed to have no soul, then I would say that it ceases also to be charitable and deserves no more appreciation nor a better fate than follows a corporation without a soul. It is to such organizations that the poet refers when he says:

"The organized charity scrimped and iced,

In the name of a cautious statistical Christ."

Indeed some of your organized charities are all organization and no charity, and some are even worse in that they use the

name of charity in their collections and then divert them to other purposes. Such methods and such organizations discredit the cause of charity and of the poor, and perpetrate a crime which is as mean as it is infamous. It should be, indeed, one of the objects as well as the duty of organized charities to rid the city of these parasites.

We are in favor, then, of properly organized charity, and we are, furthermore, in favor of its furnishing, in so far as this is possible, the fullest statistics pertaining to its methods and operation. At the same time we realize that there is and always will be a field for the charity that works from individual to individual, the charity that consists of the numberless kindly deeds of which there is no record, save what is written up in the book of life, the charity described in the phrase that the left hand is not to know what the right hand does.

There may be many deceptions, many recipients who are unworthy; yet numerous though these be, there are they who are worthy, who may be otherwise unhelped and unheeded, and who more than atone for the unworthy.

It is this form of charity in word and work which can be with us all the day long, which needs no conference for its exploitation and expects no crown here below for its merits, leaving the final reckoning to Him who has promised not to forget. And that what is done, hidden though it be, will be by Him remembered, and the memory thereof and the record shall be for all eternity.