Page:The Eternal Priesthood (4th ed).djvu/91

Rh unpunctuality, self-indulgence, and dissipation? The whole of a priest's life may be determined by his first outset. He has been in it too short a time either to gain or to buy experience.

2. Another danger in a priest's life arises from the length of time that he has been in it. He came into it in all the first brightness of the character impressed upon him on the day of his ordination. The exercise of his priesthood, if faithful and fervent, would add a growing brightness to his sacerdotal character and life. But soon "the fine gold becomes dim." He is acclimatised to his surroundings. It may be he is placed among older priests who, though good, have become lax and easy-going. His first charity subsides, and the old mind comes up again. He is the same man as he was before; or perhaps the old habit of mind comes back with the force of a reaction. He began by resolving to live up to many counsels of a higher spirit, but he subsides to the level of commandments. His good resolutions are not retracted, but often unfulfilled, and survive as intentions or conditional promises made by himself to himself, with a large latitude and a wide clause as to the possibility of observance. He does not lower his aim, or his standard by any express