Page:History of Freedom.djvu/492

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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY



The most exalted methods of serving religion do not lie in the path of a periodical \vhich addresses a general audience. The appliances of the spiritual life belong to a more retired sphere-that of the priesthood, of the sacraments, of religious offices; that of prayer, meditation, and self-examination. They are profaned by exposure, and choked by the distractions of public affairs. The world cannot - be taken into the confidence of our inner life, nor can the discussion of ascetic morality be compli- cated \vith the secular questions of the day. To make the attempt \vould be to usurp and degrade a holier \ office. The function of the journalist is on another level. He may toil in the same service, but not in the same rank, as the master-\vorkman. His tools are coarser, his method less refined, and if his range is more extended, his influence is less intense. Literature, like government, assists religion, but it does so indirectly, and from without. The ends for \vhich it \vorks are distinct from those of the Church, and yet subsidiary to them; and the more independently each force achieves its own end, the more complete will the ultimate agreement be found, and the more will religion profit. The course of a periodical publication in its relation to the Church is defined by this distinction of ends; its sphere is limited by the difference and inferiority of the means which it employs, \vhile the need for its existence and its independence is vindicated by the necessity there is for the service it performs. I t is the peculiar mission of the Church to be the channel of grace to each soul by her spiritual and pastoral action-she alone has this mission; but it is not her only work. She has also to govern and educate, so far as government and education are needful subsidiaries to her great \vork of the salvation of souls. By her discipline, her morality, her la\v, she strives to realise the divine order upon earth; while by her intellectual labour she seeks an even fuller knowledge of the \vorks, the ideas, and the nature of God. But the ethical and intellectual offices of the Church, as distinct from her spiritual office, are not hers exclusively or peculiarly. They were dis..