The business of the Church in the world is twofold : to teach and to aid. She has to set out the divine truths, issue moral warnings, rebuke and exhort in season and out of season; further, she has the custody of those sacred signs which carry with them the grace of God, and through the communication of which the souls receiving them are enabled to carry out these divine precepts and exhortations. She teaches to the world about her the ideals of Christ, and she gives to the world the power of Christ whereby these ideals can be realised. In short, to use words which have become familiar to this generation, we can say that the Church has to perform the functions both of a priest and a prophet.

Now, if in view of these two functions we were to try to judge the Church of our own time in as detached a fashion as we could, we should probably agree that the priestly side of the Church’s office is being performed with a zeal and a response such as no other age of her history can have surpassed. To dogmatise on historical parallels between one age and another would be foolish, because impossible of verification or proof : yet the closest student of history would, I believe, be hard put to discover a period of Christian development when the sacramental system was so much frequented as it is to-day. Merely to consult any of the popular spiritual manuals of the last four centuries and to contrast them with those of to-day is to make one realise the enormous increase of sacramental devotion that has been made in these last years.