little they have! Thank God, Christ has promised that the poor we shall have always with us, for, to me, they seem as angels pointing out the way to heaven! And God bless this fair land where each brawny youth is a king and each lowly maiden is a queen, even though their palaces may be a workshop or a hovel! And God bless the Church, whose gentle, motherly influence represses alike the rash uprisings of her poorer children and the greed and tyranny of her richer and more powerful subjects! It is she and she alone, that can ever settle this vexed question by leading men to look at the matter from a Christian standpoint and in the light of Christian principles. " Time," she says to the poor man, " time is but a moment compared to eternity; and what matters it if you are poor and wretched as Lazarus here, if you have it in your power to be rich and happy forever hereafter." "Time," she says to the rich man, " time is but a moment compared to eternity; and it availeth you nothing if you gain the whole world here, if you suffer the loss of your immortal soul hereafter." It is the Church and the Church alone that can preserve the equilibrium of society — reducing the richest to the level of the poorest by preaching " Blessed are the poor in spirit," and exalting the very poorest infinitely above the very richest by promising or securing them possession of the kingdom of heaven.
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