The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1904-09-03

grand too sublime to be called life's twilight with
its accompaniment Of Sadness thought and APP
prehension, but the ioy-going down of eternity.
More than any other, hfe which so much prom
Uses and gives so little. berays the leper and leaves
him alone with his mseries and his blasted hopes.
Life fades from his eyes hope in the present wlhers
in his dried heart ambition Is frustrated, love
proves selfish friendship plays false, all is lost;
yes all IS lost save perhaps God; and happy IS that
child of III fortune if III his of trouble he turns
TO God and says with Job; The Lord gave the
Lord took away; blessed be the of the Lord"
In our limited acquaintance with the nature and
history of this much-to- be-dreaded maady
pleasingly impressed with its rapid disappearance.
But the dismal cloud hangs still over some lands,
the illness poisons the brcezes of certain valleys,
and unlike the priest of the gospel Witnessing to Its
cure the Catholic priest today, in the past bears
testimony 10 It's existence, and ministers to its
wants.
Today we scee another Damien beating his way
across the burning plains of Columbia, begging
aims from door to door, springing the mlseres OF
Aqua de Dios and San Martin upon wondering audi
ences and pleading the cause of the most afflicted
members of the great brotherhood of humanity
But the monk and the sister who, year after year,
bid goodbye to Sunny Italy and bctakc themselves
TO the Columbian valley of death, to fill the place of
their fallen brethren, perform even more merltor-
ious and heroic deeds.
Day and night in turn do they watch over the
leper with death enanating from his every pore;
they minister to his wants, they dress his body
which is one sore; when overcome at last by fatigue
and vigil il is not rare to them rest their weary
head upon his pallet they comfort him, they win his
undivided affections by patience and kindness; they
brave him against his misery by nice words about
God all beautiful all good and his home of many
mansions; they depict III such glowing colors his
own mansion that homo with ceiling of gold and
walls of jasper that the poor leper forgets himself
and his hideous scabs, thinks only of God and provl-
dence and longs to be with Jesus and the angels.
They cultivate resignation and hope and teach HIM
to die Christian-like by prayer and eNhortaon and
In few years by the example Of their own salnted
death.
Time and time again ones patience is put to a
test by the example of Catholics, who more
charlatan than Catholic discourse for ever and q
day rpon the merits of other creeds and lnstltu-
tions No good Catholic deplores their existence or
usefulness The world cannot dispense with any
organization, whose benefccnce Is as broad as
charity and as unprciudiced that OF God, whose
sun shines for ALL But Catholics who lavish praise
upon other religious bodies and forget their own
church. shrk duty and do not understand men.
The followers of other creeds know their own
church better than we, and will not overlook self
praise when occasion offers, for moulded
rather much after the type of Salvation Army
officer who recently said of himself: "Well, II !
am not a saint there amt in heaven.
Who constantly lauds other creeds with which
he comes much in contact and speaks disParagingly
! of his own knows neither the church he belongs to-
nor the one he bindly admres.
A venerable institution, whose duration bespeaki
divine origin: victorious all that Is power fol
evil: triumphant in moments when the very all
resounded with voices crying for her destruction
loudly as the Jewish rabble camoured for the deatf
of Jesus Christ, her head and support; an institu
ton the destroyer the mother and the regulator Of
empires, who sat in the Grecian schools to Learn
! and assimilate and improve upon the wise maxim;
of philosophers; is there in such an institution
nothing audable, nothing admirable!
An institution that has beheld armies go, see anC
conquer that has built and rests upon the ruins O
nations. the emblem of power; an institution
whose history Is the work of the spirit renovatins
the worlds face; the venerable mother who can 81
today midst the debris of time and. speak to he
\ children of pre-Christian customs and teaching
with the authority Of an eye witness and narrat