“And we further insist on the natural virtues because they tend to place man in true relations with himself and with nature, thus bringing him into more perfect relation or union with God than he was by means of the creative act—­a proper preliminary to his supernatural relation.  Who will deny that there were men not a few among the heathen in whom Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance were highly exemplified?  They knew well enough what right reason demanded.  Such men as Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius had by the natural light of reason a knowledge of what their nature required of them.  They had faults, great ones if you please; at the same time they knew them to be faults, and they had the natural virtues in greater or less degrees.  Thus the union between God and the soul, due to the creative act, though not sufficient, never was interrupted.  The Creator and the Mediator are one.”

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CHAPTER XXVIII

THE PAULIST PARISH AND MISSIONS

IN serving the parish, the Paulists, led by Father Hecker, endeavored to utilize the individual qualities of each member, as well as the advantages of a community, so as to bring them to bear as distinct forces upon the people.  What George Miles had said of them as missionaries, as quoted in a previous chapter, applied to them as parish priests, and told accordingly in result.  Their personal excellences found free room for activity, without any lack of oneness of spirit and without interfering with harmony of action.

The missionary makes an efficient parish priest.  Accustomed to severe labor as well as to very moderate recreation, he pours the energy of apostolic zeal into parochial channels.  A high order of preaching is often the result, combined with tireless application to visiting the sick, hunting up sinners, and hearing confessions.  On the other hand, the experience of regular parish duty is of assistance to the missionary when he returns to his “apostolic expeditions,” as Pius IX. called them; he is all the better fitted to plan and execute his proper enterprises from having obtained a fuller knowledge of the ordinary state of things in a parish.

It will not be expected that a detailed account of the parish work of St. Paul’s will here be given, or more than a brief summary of that of the missions.  These latter were kept up with vigorous energy from 1858 till the close of the war in the spring of 1865.  On April 4 of that year Father Baker died, and the missions, which had been a grievous burden to the little band, now became an impossibility.  They were suspended till 1872, excepting an occasional one, given not so much as part of the current labor of the community, as to retain their sweet savor in the memory and as an earnest of their future resumption.  But up to Father Baker’s death this small body of men had preached almost everywhere throughout the country, getting away from the South just before the war blocked the road.  Eighty-one missions had been given, hundreds of converts had been received into the Church and many scores of thousands of confessions heard.  Numerous applications for missions were refused for want of men to preach them.  Scarcely a city of any size in the United States and Canada but knew the Paulists and thanked God for their missions.