The essence of the priest is that he should believe himself, however humbly and secretly, to be set in a certain sense between humanity and God.  He is conscious, if not of a mission, at least of a vocation, as an interpreter of secrets, a guardian of mysteries; he would believe that there are certain people in the world who are called to be apostles, whose work it is to remind men of God, and to justify the ways of God to men.  He feels that he stands, like Aaron, to make atonement; that he is in a certain definite relation to God, a relation which all do not share; and that this gives him, in a special sense, something of the divine and fatherly relation to men.  In the hands of a perfectly humble, perfectly disinterested man, this may become a very beautiful and tender thing.  Such a man, from long and intimate relations with humanity, will have a very deep knowledge of the human heart.  He will be surprised at no weakness or frailty; he will be patient with all perverseness and obduracy; he will be endlessly compassionate, because he will realize the strength and insistence of temptation; he will be endlessly hopeful, because he will have seen, a hundred times over, the flower of virtue and love blooming in an arid and desolate heart.  He will have seen close at hand the transforming power of faith, even in natures which have become the shuddering victims of evil habit.

Such a priest as I describe had occasion once to interview a great doctor about the terrible case of a woman of high social position who had become the slave of drink.  The doctor was a man of great force and ability, and of unwearying devotion; but he was what would be called a sceptic and a materialist.  The priest asked if the case was hopeless; the great doctor shrugged his shoulders.  “Yes,” he said, “pathologically speaking, it is hopeless; there may be periods of recovery, but the course that the case will normally run will be a series of relapses, each more serious and of longer duration than the last.”  “Is there no chance of recovery on any line that you could suggest?” said the priest.  The two looked at each other, both good men and true.  “Well,” said the doctor after a pause, “this is more in your line than mine; the only possible chance lies in the will, and that can only be touched through an emotion.  I have seen a religious emotion successful, where everything else failed.”  The priest smiled and said, “I suppose that would seem to you a species of delusion?  You would not admit that there was any reality behind it?” “Yes,” said the doctor, “a certain reality, no doubt; the emotional processes are at present somewhat obscure from the scientific point of view:  it is a forlorn hope.”  “Yes,” said the priest, “and it is thus the kind of task for which I and those of my calling feel bound to volunteer.”