Page:Pastoral letter of the first National Council of the United States - held in Baltimore in May, 1852 (IA PastoralLetter1852).pdf/11

Rh here, as well as elsewhere, the Church will be able to show the proofs of her children's faith in the numerous temples raised to the honor of God's name, in the beauty of His Sanctuary which the true Christian will ever love, and in the ample and permanent provision made for the maintenance of public worship.

The education of candidates for the ministry is one of our most urgent wants. Notwithstanding the multiplied privations, difficulties and embarrassments, which our predecessors experienced, and which have not yet entirely disappeared, they spared no sacrifice in order to rear up successors to their ministry who should be equal to the wants, and worthy of the piety, of their people. These wants increase with the increase of the population; and we have no hesitation in avowing that the efforts hitherto made to supply our churches with priests are far from being adequate. To attain this—the most important of all means to be employed for the maintenance and diffusion of Religion,—we need your co-operation, which we are confident will not be refused. We ask not for ourselves, but for you, and for your children. We seek to avert the evil of hearing the cries of the little ones in Christ for the bread of life, without being able to afford them one to break it. to them. We seek to avert the evils resulting from the want of a regular and permanent source for the perpetuation of the ministry, which we have so often experienced, and which, if left without a remedy, must continue to produce most disastrous results.

Without priests educated in the science of the sanctuary and trained up to the practice of its virtues, under our own eyes, or under the care of those to whom we may commit this important trust, we cannot hope to behold the ministry adapted to the wants of the country, or equal to the work which the providence of God has assigned to us. Co-operate, then, generously and perseveringly, with your respective prelates in their efforts to provide a suitable ministry for our infant churches; cultivate the virtuous dispositions of those among your children, who, attracted by the beauty of holiness, manifest in an early age the desire—most frequently the inspiration of divine grace—to consecrate themselves to the service of the altar. Let it be for you a matter of devout thanksgiving and holy exultation, that your offspring prefer the service of God's altar, to all the attractions