for the discharge of their duty to create a visible Church of perfect purity. I will not stop to point out how their aim is impossible of attainment, how it elevates man's knowledge of himself and others to a degree beyond human attainment, how it favours piety of the lip rather than of the heart, how it tends to sink into formalism as complete as that from which it professes to give deliverance. I would rather ask you to consider how it falls short of the large-hearted charity of the Catholic Church, which strives, imperfectly no doubt, but still strives to express the fulness of its Master's teaching. The Church asserts that the Incarnation was so mighty an event that no one born into the world since then can be the same as he would have been if Christ had not lived and died. Every human soul received thereby an increased preciousness in the eyes of God; and the Church, its teaching, its ceremonies and its discipline are but an adoring witness of that stupendous truth. Its testimony cannot be limited by human frailty, however sad, or by human knowledge, however great its claims. Its doors stand always open to receive Christ's little ones, and give them the token of His presence with them and the gift of the added power of His Spirit which nestles within their young souls, which grows with their growth, and is harder to alienate than the loving care of parents.
It seems strange to us to exclude Christ's little ones from His visible Church when He called little children to come unto Him, when He said that except we became as little children we should in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. It seems stranger still
