the schools of law and medicine in the United States will agree to receive only graduates of a full collegiate course.

Farmers formerly had little patience with the college man who would presume to instruct them in agriculture. It was their boast that actual experience on the farm was worth more than all the book knowledge in the world. Now they are regular attendants at Farmers' Institutes, conducted under the auspices of agricultural colleges by professors whose entire education for their positions has been in most instances purely collegiate. More, they are sending their sons to college in greater numbers, the better to prepare them for the life of a farmer in America in the twentieth century; and instead of sending them late in the fall and taking them out early in the spring, as they used to do during the two or three years they gave them at college, they are insisting on a regular attendance during a much longer period. They realize that it is only the trained mind that can detect the scientific side of farming and by scientific experiment contribute to its advancement. They are alive to the fact that mental culture sweetens the cup of toil and counteracts the debasing tendencies of material occupations, and that if the children are to be kept on the farm and spared the pitfalls of city life, there must be more of it.

Not to speak of the ward politician and his partner in the State legislature, now happily passing away, tell me who have been our presidents, the governors of our States, our senators, and our representatives in the national congress? As a body they have been college men, large numbers of them having been taken from the learned professions. In fact I may say a liberal education is regarded by the American people generally as an essential qualification in candidates for such offices. Indeed, the college professor or president is beginning to be looked upon as being capable of combining high intellectual

attainments with the practical wisdom needed in a chief executive.

As for the priesthood and the religious life, the laws and customs of the Church from time immemorial have made a liberal education a necessary preparation for the study of the sacred sciences. This it was, in the days when the Church was lifting Europe from barbarism, and creating a Christian civilization, that enabled the clergy and the religious Orders to keep the torch of science burning, to preserve and translate the` Scriptures and the classics, to rescue from oblivion the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and make it serve the cause of revealed truth, to develop the sciences of law and medicine, to create Christian architecture and the Christian arts of painting and sculpture, poetry and music, to teach Europe the science and the art of agriculture, to lay down the principles of good government and direct the affairs of state. The establishment of the cathedral schools and their development into the monastic schools, and then into the great universities of the thirteenth century, is both the cause and the effect of the liberal education of the clergy and of the wonderful things which that education inspired and accomplished. And even to-day, wherever the priest is given the sceptre of leadership in the things that make for the moral and material betterment of his community, this is due in no small measure to the power of his superior education.

In our modern world the laity are called upon to take an active part in dispensing the blessings of civilization. If they would perform their task with credit to themselves and profit to the people, they must imbibe that broad and liberalizing spirit of intellectual culture which in former times made the action of the clergy so beneficent. And I may say in passing that if heretofore in America Catholic laymen have not had

their share of the high positions in state and nation, this was due to their lack of higher education more perhaps than to any other cause. In the past poverty could be pleaded as an excuse for not securing the higher education. The excuse is no longer valid. Many have acquired wealth, and the great body are in easy circumstances, while Catholic institutions of higher education have been multiplied all over the land, ready, like the fabled Briareus of the hundred hands, to lift our youth up to those intellectual heights where knowledge is as pure as the air of our mountains, as sweet as the water that springeth from the rock, as strong as the everlasting hills.

Excellent and useful as is education in perfecting the mind and in imparting to it power and influence, it would be incomplete if it did not perfect and strengthen the will. Knowledge is, indeed, power, but it is a power for the good of the individual and society only when steadied by a will thoroughly consolidated in virtue and morality. This was the teaching of the Father of our Country, who declared knowledge and virtue to be the two essential supports of the Republic. Going further, Washington affirmed and proved that virtue and morality cannot be sound and enduring without religion. This thought is at the very root of the whole educational system of the Church. Yes, if religion with its wisdom from above and its eternal sanction is necessary to strengthen virtue and direct knowledge in the man and the citizen, surely it should be the most active force in the education of those who are being prepared for manhood and citizenship. And if this is true of all education, it is emphatically true of the higher education of college and university, by which are created intellectual aristocrats and leaders of the people.

Time was when the clergy were regarded as the only teachers and defenders of the faith. That time has gone by.

This is the century of the laity. To the Catholic layman the world looks for information on religious subjects which it will not seek from the priest. To him it voices its disapprobation of Catholic teaching and practice. Not to be able to furnish the information or supply the proper defence would argue in him a lack of appreciation of his duty as a Catholic gentleman in the surroundings in which Providence has placed him. It is a time of great crises in the world. The principles of Christianity are losing their hold on the minds of men, the family is disintegrating, vast social changes are putting to the test longestablished teachings. The Church alone possesses the forces of truth and grace which will save society. To secure the widest diffusion of these forces is an obligation imposed upon the Catholic layman both by patriotism and religion.

To be a worthy spokesman and defender of the faith, the Catholic layman must be a model of Christian morality. In his private life he must be sober, stainless, and above reproach. The strictest honesty should characterize all his dealings with his fellow-man. He should account it his duty to take part in every movement that makes for the moral betterment of his community. He should regard it as his proudest privilege to defend his country's flag and to spread abroad the blessings of liberty and peace of which it is the embodiment.

Where will the Catholic layman acquire that thorough grasp and deep conviction of the teachings of faith which will enable him to give the answer of the Church to the unbelief and materialism of the age? Where will he develop that self-control and self-denial and that spirit of genuine altruism which will make of him a worker for the cause of Christianity that "needeth not to be ashamed," whose life will not give the lie to his preaching? In schools which ignore God and His Christ and the supernatural? In schools which are satisfied with the

mere externals of morality? As well might it be said that a man could fit himself for the teaching and practice of law or medicine by attending a university which omitted these two branches from its curriculum. No, as a man can prepare himself for intellectual leadership only by receiving a higher education, so can he prepare himself for Catholic leadership only by receiving a Catholic higher education. Never in the history of the world has the lay apostolate had so glorious an opportunity as it has to-day in America; but it is our Catholic institutions of higher learning alone that can furnish worthy leaders for that apostolate.

My dear Catholic people, as religion is the chief pillar of our government, so are our Catholic schools under Providence the chief prop of our religion. As we love religion and country, therefore, so should we love our schools. That you do love them it is unnecessary for you to declare. You need only point to that vast network of educational institutions which extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific — institutions built and maintained without state aid and at the cost of untold sacrifices. You need only point to those noble bands of men and women your own sons and daughters whose lives you have consecrated to the glorious work of Christian education. My only exhortation is that you cultivate a deeper love for your schools of higher education - your academies, colleges, and universities. These it is, more than the others, that have given to the Church that intellectual and moral power which has made her a positive force in the solution of the world's problems. These it is that have made possible our primary and grammar schools. "As the sun gilds the mountain tops before his light floods the plains," so the lower education presupposes the higher. It is with knowledge as it is with goodness. We cannot have the good and the better without