Page:The Eternal Priesthood (4th ed).djvu/94

82 to God: he has the usufruct, not the dominium, of them. He cannot alienate them. If any priest do so he will be forced to say at last, Vineam meam non custodivi. The palmer-worm and the canker-worm will do their work stealthily, but surely.

The having too much to do often leads to doing nothing well. All things are done in haste and on the surface. There is no time lost which is given to mental prayer and union with God. Every word that proceeds out of such a mind does more than a hundred words uttered from the lips of a man dried up by overwork. The constant overtax of intellectual and bodily activity tends to form a natural, external, and unspiritual character. It betrays itself in the confessional and in preaching. How often we hear it said, "My confessor is a holy man, but he never speaks a word beyond my penance and absolution."

And how surely we know from what a superficial source the ready stream of bright, cold, intellectual preaching flows.

4. There is yet in a priest's life another danger the reverse of the last; namely, the having too little to do. If, as we have seen, the exercise of the priesthood and of the pastoral office is of itself a means of sanctification, then in the measure in which it is suspended or unexercised the priest must